■iniiili  ■■iini  I  iiiiii  itiiii  llniiiiiilliiiiiiiii  mil  ill  Hill  iillh  iiil 


I  ilHI 


iiiiii'iniiiiiiii)! 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


By  the  Same  Author 


NEW  rOEMS 

ENGLISH  POEMS 

PAINTED  SHADOWS 

OCTOBER  VAGABONDS 

TRAVELS   IN    ENGLAND 

ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 

RUBAIYAT  OF  OMAR  KHAYYAM 

THE  ROMANCE  OF  ZION    CHAPEL 

ORESTES 

PROSE  FANCIES.    First  Series 

PROSE  FANCIES.    Second  Series 

THE  BOOK  BILLS  OF  NARCISSUS 

RUDYARD  KIPLING:  A  CRITICISM 

THE  WORSHIPPER  OF  THE  IMAGE 

ODES  FROM  THE   DIVAN   OF   HAFIZ 

THE    QUEST    OF    THE    GOLDEN    GIRL 

LITTLE     DINNERS     WITH     THE     SPHINX 

THE  RELIGION   OF  A  LITERARY  MAN 

RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS :  A  LITERARY  LOG 

GEORGE  INIEREDITH:    SOME  CHARACTERISTICS 

SLEEPING  BEAUTY    AND    OTHER    PROSE   FANCIES 


ATT  I T  UDES 
AND  AVOWALS 

WITH  SOME    ^    ^    ^    ^    ^ 
RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 


BY 
RICHARD  LE  GALLTENNE 


New  York  :  JOHN  LANE  COMPANY,   MCMX 
London :  JOHN  LANE,  THE  BODLEY  HEAD 


Cop>Ti>j;ht,  1910,  by  A  gg 


JOHN  lANE  COMPANY 


PUBLISHERS   PRINTING   COMPANY.    New  Yohk 


TO 

GERTRUDE    ATHERTON 

WITH  HOMAGE  FOR  THE 

WRITER  AND  AFFECTION 

FOR  THE  FRIEND 


THE  following  papers  have  been  published  at  various  times 
in  The  Forlnig'ally  Review,  The  Academy,  The  Forum, 
Harper  s  Magazine,  Success,  The  Smart  Sd,  Ainslee's,  The 
Cosmopoliian,  and  The  New  York  Times,  to  the  several  editors 
of  which  the  writer  desires  to  make  his  acknowledgments.  The 
essay  on  Gcor;:^e  ^Meredith's  Modern  Love  is  reprinted  from  a 
private  edition  of  that  poem  printed  by  IMr.  Mitchell  Kennericy. 


CONTENTS 


CEU^PTER 

I.  The  Profession  of  Poet  . 
II.  Concerning  Fairy-Tales   . 

III.  The  Laurel  of  Gossip 

IV.  Clouds       .... 
V.  Concerning  a  Woman's  Smile 

VI.  Citizens  of  Nature  . 
VII.  The  Human  Need  of  Coney  Island 
VIII.  The  Dream  Children  of  Literature 
IX.  Books  as  Doctors 
X.  On  the  Lovableness  of  Lords 
XL  The  World  and  the  Lover 
XII.  On  Airships  and  the  Soul  of  Man 
XIII.  The  Word  Business 


PAGE 

II 

24 

38 

53 
63 

71 


108 
121 

146 
IS4 


II 


I. 

Grant  Allen 

167 

II. 

Tennyson  (i  809-1 909)         .... 

212 

III. 

Four  Notes  on  George  Meredith:  . 

227 

I.  Modern  Love 

227 

11.  The  185 1  Poems        .... 

234 

III.  George  Meredith's  Poetry 

245 

IV.  George  Meredith:  In  Memoriam     . 

261 

[7] 

CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

IV.  Re-Reading  Hawthorne    .         .         . 
V.  A  Note  on  Maurice  Hewlett  . 
VI.  A  Note  on  Stephen  Phillips    • 
VII.  A  Vivisectionist  of  Literature 
VIII.  Anatole  France  in  English  Dress 
IX.  William  Watson  and  His  Poetry 
X.  A  Day  at  Home  with  Bjornson 
XI.  Sydney  Lanier:  An  English  Appreciation 


PAGE 
267 

292 

322 

339 
342 


[8] 


Part   I 

ATTITU  D  ES 
AND    AVOWALS 


ATTITUDES 
AND  AVOWALS 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  POET 

ANYONE  who  has  ever  received  a  cheque 
in  payment  for  a  poem  must  surely  have 
^  been  struck  by  the  incongruity  of  the 
transaction;  and,  again,  if  he  made  any  note  of  the 
manner  in  which  he  spent  that  cheque,  he  must 
have  been  still  further  impressed  by  the  fantastic 
nature  of  a  calling  which  thus  brings  him  to  market 
with  such  merchandise  for  such  payment.  Alummy 
has  indeed  become  merchandise  and  Pharaoh  is 
sold  for  balsams. 

Literary  history  records  with  dramatic  unction 
the  pitiful  sums  paid  by  antiquity  for  its  master- 
pieces. A  paltry  twenty  pounds  for  "  Paradise 
Lost"!  We  raise  our  hands  in  pious  judgment 
upon  a  preposterous  past.  There  is  latent  in  our 
surprise  the  assumption  that,  say,  a  million  dollars 
would  have  been  about  right.  It  does  not  occur 
to  us  to  be  surprised  that  Milton  was  paid  anything 
at   all — paid  for  his  sidereal  song  in  the  copper 


ATTITUDES   AND  AVOWALS 

coinage  of  our  mortality.  And,  so  far  as  I  know, 
no  literary  historian  has  attempted  to  trace  what 
became  of  the  money  thus  grudgingly  and  fantas- 
tically disbursed,  though,  indeed,  I  can  imagine 
no  more  fascinating  matter  for  speculative' inquiiy. 
How  did  Shakespeare  spend  the  proceeds  of  "  Ham- 
let "  ?  What  did  Keats  do  with  the  money  he 
received  for  "  Endymion,"  and  what  did  he  buy  with 
the  "Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn"?  Yes!  What  did 
the  Vintner  buy  ? 

To  settle  a  gas  bill  or  pay  something  on  account 
to  a  butcher  seems  a  sorry  destination  for  money 
earned  by  the  aspiration  of  the  soul  or  the  tumult 
of  the  heart;  but  it  is,  of  course,  only  the  other  half 
of  the  paradox  of  having  been  paid  in  money  at  all. 

Byron  was,  of  course,  right  in  refusing — at  first — 
to  accept  money  for  his  poetry,  and  telling  Murray, 
so  to  say,  to  "keep  the  change."  Murray  was  a 
publisher.  Pubhshers  are  tradesmen,  and  it  is 
proper  for  tradesmen  to  make  money.  That  is 
why  they  are  tradesmen.  A  poet  is  different.  It 
is  not  his  business  to  make  money,  but  to  make 
poetry — and  to  live  as  best  he  can.  The  world 
can  neither  give  to  him  nor  take  away.  All  the 
real  giving  is  on  his  side,  and  there  is  no  question 
in  his  case  of  remuneration  or  reward.  The  world 
has  nothing  he  values.  If  it  choose,  it  can  make 
offerings  to  him  as  to  its  gods,  or  bring  to  him  tithes 


THE  PROFESSION   OF  POET 

of  corn  and  wine  as  to  its  priests,  or  it  can  crown 
him  with  symbolic  laurels;  but  the  rewards  of  the 
world  are  for  the  children  of  the  world,  and  to  the 
poet  its  honours  are  ridiculous.  The  world,  of 
course,  does  its  best  when  it  confers  a  knighthood 
upon  one  of  its  poets,  but  such  a  proceeding  is 
none  the  less  absurd.  It  might  as  well  array  him 
in  a  Masonic  apron,  or  hang  the  cross  of  the  Legion 
of  Honour  around  the  neck  of  a  nightingale. 

They  understood  this  matter  better  in  the  old 
East.  The  poets  of  Shah  and  Sultan  were  rewarded 
with  milk-white  horses  from  the  royal  stables,  mules 
laden  with  silks  and  precious  stones,  rose  gardens 
and  beautiful  slaves ;  and  Hafiz  records  of  one  of  his 
odes, 

So  well  I  sang  it,  Heaven's  Lord 
Tossed  me  from  Heaven  as  reward 
The  small  change  of  the  Pleiades. 

The  surprise  with  which  the  poet  receives  his 
earthly  cheque  for  his  immaterial  merchandise — can 
it  be  a  real  cheque,  a  cheque  liable  to  be  honoured 
this  side  the  moon? — is  of  a  piece  with  his  whole 
relation  to  society,  to  the  world  in  which  he  so 
strangely  finds  himself — a  stranger.  The  poet  is 
the  real  man  in  the  moon,  that  came  down  too  soon, 
and  is  always  asking  his  way — to  the  moon.  He  is, 
so  to  speak,  a  phantom  in  fleshly  garb,  an  inspired 
spectre,  embodied  for  a  while  for  mystic  purposes  of 

[13] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

divine  speech;  and  even  to  the  gross  sense  of  the 
world  there  is  a  suspicion  of  the  supernatural  about 
him,  and  about  his  Hfe  ever  an  air  of  romantic 
miracle.  In  fact,  he  is  the  romantic  soul  of  man  con- 
sciously embodied  and  articulate.  He  is  and  does 
"what  some  men  dream  of  all  their  lives."  What 
mankind  at  large  sees  but  in  a  glass  darkly  he  sees 
face  to  face.  The  opaque  commonplaces  of  human 
experience  are  for  him  constantly  diaphanous  with 
the  creative  light  that  first  made  and  is  forever 
making  all  things.  To  him  man,  beneath  all  his 
fractional  disguises  and  parochial  activities,  is  all 
the  time  a  mysterious  spirit,  a  being  of  mysterious 
destiny,  a  ghostly  creature  of  infinite  portent,  his 
life  a  witchcraft  thing  of  magic  joy  and  magic 
sorrow.  Beneath  the  dusty  surface  of  "days  and 
things  diurnal,"  he  is  aware  of  the  flowing  and 
weaving  and  singing  and  weeping  of  the  radiant  tragic 
forces  of  the  sibylline  universe.  He  is  the  visionary 
of  the  Vision.  He  is  the  dreamer,  at  one  with  the 
dream.  The  earth  he  treads  is  to  him  a  star, 
vibrating  with  radiance.  He  feels  the  stellar  light 
breaking  from  beneath  his  feet,  through  all  its 
rocky  crust ;  he  hears  its  planetary  song,  star  to  star, 
across  the  holy  gulfs  of  space.  He  is  lonely — and 
yet  never  alone,  filled  with  awe — yet  never  afraid, 
an  atom — and  yet  an  immensity,  homeless — and 
yet  so  strangely  at  home.     For,  tiptoe  on  the  little 

[14] 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  POET 

hill  of  our  mortal  life,  he  has  seen  the  wliite  presences 
upon  the  peaks  and  heard  the  voices  of  the  eternal 
gods. 

It  is  the  fascination  of  the  poet's  Hfe — and  also 
its  fascination  for  the  sjinpathetic  onlooker — that 
he  thus  consciously  lives  all  his  days  this  dual  exist- 
ence, inhabitant  of  two  worlds  at  once,  free  at  once 
of  the  gates  of  ivory  and  horn.  In  the  crowded 
avenue  he  is  walking  upon  moonbeams;  the  gods 
beckon  him  at  street  corners;  in  the  close  packed 
car  he  talks  with  spirits,  and  in  the  roaring  vortices 
of  trafific  he  is  deep  in  the  heart  of  the  ancient  wood. 

From  this  duality  of  his  nature,  his  life  must  often 
wear  the  aspect  of  paradox,  for  in  his  experience,  in 
his  personal  history,  he  is  seen  to  be  at  once  so  pas- 
sionately human  and  so  impersonally  detached  from 
humanity.  Everything  that  happens  to  him  seems 
to  happen  in  two  ways  at  once — to  him  as  an  individ- 
ual, and  to  him,  so  to  say,  as  a  cosmic  spectator. 
He  lives  his  joys  and  sorrows  with  an  ardour  and 
emphasis  perhaps  keener  than  that  of  other  men, 
and  at  the  same  time  stands  aloof  from  them,  as 
mysterious  and  poignant  phenomena  thrilling  with 
an  infinite  pathos  and  significance.  When  he  loves, 
the  face  he  loves  is  not  merely  a  beautiful  human 
face,  but  the  embodied  mystery  of  all  beauty: 

Sometimes  thou  seemest  not  as  thyself  alone, 
But  as  the  meaning  of  all  things  that  are. 

[is] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

Death  to  him  is  not  merely  his  own  personal  loss, 
but  the  universal  tragic  enigma  of  existence.  He  is 
at  once  the  most  personal  and  the  least  personal  of 
beings,  and  his  actions  and  happenings  are  curiously 
magnified  and  diminished  at  the  same  moment 
and  from  the  same  cause — at  once  "big  with 
eternity"  and  small  by  cosmic  comparison.  Hence 
in  his  life  a  strange  ardour  keeps  company  with 
a  strange  coldness,  and  with  both  goes  ever  a 
strange  sadness — the  sadness  that  sits  mysteriously 
at  the  heart  of  all  joy,  the  sadness  of  beautiful 
music,  of  lovely  faces,  the  sadness  of  flowers  and 
stars,  the  sadness  of  young  laughter  and  running 
water. 

Of  course,  all  reflective  natures  are  thus  touched 
with  starlight,  "sicklied  o'er  v^th  the  pale  cast  of 
thought,"  but  with  the  majority  such  reflectiveness 
is  only  occasional,  intermittent.  For  the  most  part 
they  are,  so  to  say,  completely  and  comfortably 
embodied.  They  Hve  in  one  world  at  a  time,  and 
for  them  human  institutions  have  a  concrete  impor- 
tance and  an  opaque  stability.  Their  lives  are  lived 
absolutely,  not  relatively.  To  all  their  transactions 
they  bring  a  single-minded  seriousness,  entirely  of 
this  world.  Their  interests  or  ambitions  are  never 
thwarted  or  dismayed  by  the  sneer  or  the  sigh  of 
the  Infinite.  The  constitutions  and  conventions  of 
society  are  to  them  serious  matters,  and  banks  and 
[i6] 


THE   PROFESSION   OF  POET 

churches  and  clubs  and  armies  and  navies  seem  to 
them  as  real  as  wild  flowers. 

The  poet,  however,  is  only  partially  embodied. 
Hence,  doubtless,  the  frequent  discomfort  of  his  lot. 
He  would  seem  to  have  been  only  so  far  incarnated  as 
is  necessary  for  him  to  share,  and,  sharing,  to  inter- 
pret and  transfigure,  the  common  life  of  man.  His 
bodily  organisation  seems  still  conscious  of  the 
spiritual  processes  of  its  making,  and  he  would 
seem  to  wear  it  with  a  certain  immortal  carelessness, 
as  being  but  one  of  liis  innumerable  transformations; 
a  spirit  clothed  for  a  time  as  from  a  magic  wardrobe, 
in  the  raiment  of  humanity.  Thus  the  poet's 
life  on  earth  is  naturally  one  of  much  bewilderment 
and  misunderstanding  to  his  fellow  mortals,  whom 
he  so  curiously  resembles,  and  from  whom  he  so 
mysteriously  differs.  Living  the  same  life  as  others, 
he  lives  it  in  such  a  different  way,  throws  the  empha- 
sis so  differently,  gives  it  here  and  there  such  fantastic 
values,  answers  to  such  odd  standards  and  observes 
such  invisible  laws. 

Out  on  this  fellow  who  lives  as  he  pleases  in  a 
respectable  world — who  blasphemes  our  gods,  out- 
rages our  moralities,  mocks  our  decencies,  and  laughs 
at  our  honours!  And  yet  how  strangely  he  under- 
stands our  hearts!  Little  as  we  know  him,  how  well 
he  knows  us!  There  is  nothing  we  have  felt  or 
thought  or  done,  but  you  will  find  it  in  his  book; 

[17  J 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

no  joy,  no  sorrow,  no  hope  or  fear,  but  he  has  for 
it  a  song. 

Yes,  the  poet  is  the  universal  sympathiser,  the 
friend  of  all  the  world.  A  Greek  poet  compared 
himself  to  a  scrivener: 

Love  songs  I  write  for  him  and  her, 
Now  this,  now  that,  as  Love  dictates; 
One  birthday  gift  alone  the  Fates 

Gave  me,  to  be  Love's  vScrivener. 

The  image  is  a  good  one.  Yes,  the  poet  is  a 
scrivener  of  life.  He  sits  in  the  market  place  and 
writes  to  the  dictation  of  Life.  He  writes  our 
love  letters,  and  he  writes  our  letters  of  mourn- 
ing. In  a  sense,  he  even  writes  our  business  let- 
ters. He  not  only  writes  for  us,  but  tells  us  what 
to  say,  for  he  often  knows  what  we  mean  better 
than  we  know  ourselves.  Professor  of  a  strange 
craft,  he  sits  there  watching  the  stream  of  life,  listen- 
ing to  its  sad-glad  murmur,  at  once  carried  along 
in  it  and  yet  seated  aloof  on  its  banks.  A  strange 
profession  indeed,  none  stranger. 

The  poet  writes  our  letter  for  us,  and  we  pay  him 
his  modest  fee  and  go  our  ways.  Sometimes,  though 
not  often,  we  give  a  passing  thought  to  his  way  of 
life.  What  manner  of  man  is  he  in  his  private 
hours?  Probably  he  drinks  and  beats  his  wife! 
Or,  perhaps,  in  secret  he  is  an  anarchist,  or  devoted  to 
[i8] 


THE   PROFESSION   OF  POET 

base  pleasures!  You  have  heard  it  whispered  that 
he  is  a  murderer,  takes  drugs,  and  has  very  singular 
reU^ous  ideas  .  ,  .  A  strange  character!  But,  any- 
way, he  writes  a  beautiful  hand,  and  has  a  wonderful 
way  of  saying  things. 

A  word  here  concerning  that  side  of  the  poetic 
nature  which  is  so  sore  a  stumbling  block  to  so  many 
good  souls.  Doubtless,  the  poet  is  a  messenger  of  the 
gods,  but  for  one  of  divine  origin  he  has  an  astonish- 
ing addiction  to  earthly  pleasures.  More  than  most 
he  is  susceptible  to  the  orgiastic  call  of  the  senses 
and  the  gross  delights  of  the  flesh.  This  song 
thrillingly  pure  as  of  a  bird  at  dawn  was  in  all 
probability  written  in  the  gutter.  The  temple  fre- 
quented by  this  priest  of  Apollo  is  too  often  the 
pothouse,  and  the  company  kept  by  this  fme  spirit 
is  infrequently  that  of  old  maids  and  college  pro- 
fessors.    For, 

.  .  .  half   a  beast   is  the  great   god   Pan, 
To  laugh   as   he  sits   by  the  river. 
Making  a  poet  out   of   a  man: 
The  true  gods  sigh  for  the  cost  and  pain. 
For   the   reed    which   grows    nevermore   again. 
As  a  reed  with  the  reeds  in  the  river. 

The  reference  to  Pan  helps,  I  think,  to  clear  up 
matters.  Pan  is  unmistakably  the  father  of  poets, 
and  Pan,  it  is  to  be  feared,  is  a  god  who  is  not 
always  to  be  found  in  full  evening  dress  and  in  perfect 

1 19] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

taste.  Like  that  nature  which  he  personifies,  he  is 
apt  to  offend  in  the  society  of  squeamish  and  dainty 
persons.  He  is  often  found  lacking  in  "  refinement," 
as  understood  in  drawing-rooms  and  seminaries. 
His  exquisite  products  are  usually  brought  about 
by  processes  quite  coarse  and  shocking  to  refined 
individuals.  The  birth  of  the  violet,  fairy  child  of 
the  gross  earth,  can  hardly  be  mentioned  to  ears 
polite,  and  good  society  silently  ignores  the  roots  of 
the  rose. 

Fortunatus  ef  ille  deos  qui  novit  agrestes, 
Panaque  silvanumque  senem  Nymphasque  sorores, 

sings  Virgil,  but,  blessed  companions  as  the  country 
gods  may  be.  Pan  and  old  Silvanus  and  the  Nymph 
Sisters  can  hardly  be  called  respectable. 

The  fact,  however,  is  that  those  aberrations  of  the 
poet  which  perplex  and  offend  a  circumspect  world 
come  not  of  his  depravity,  but  of  his  innocence; 
not  of  his  lack  of  refinement,  but  of  his  possession  of 
a  refining  power  to  which  his  critics  are  strangers. 

Into   that    lap    that    brings   the   rose 
Shall   I  with  shuddering  fall, 

cries  George  Meredith,  in  a  phrase  of  profound 
spiritual  insight;  and  the  same  reassuring  alchemy 
which  we  thus  see  at  work  in  Nature's  bosom  is 
one  of  the  mysterious  powers  of  the  poet's  heart. 
[20] 


THE   PROFESSION   OF   POET 

To  him  there  is  literally  notWng  common  and 
unclean,  no  such  thing  as  "dead  matter,"  no  such 
thing  as  "gross  earth,"  no  such  thing  as  "flesh 
without  spirit";  and  it  is  by  this  gift  of  passionate 
vitality,  one  with  Nature's  own,  that  white  fire  of 
living  that  is  in  him,  that  he  is  able  to  transmute 
even  the  death  and  dross  of  things  into  "something 
rich  and  strange,"  by  the  purity  of  his  heart  to  see 
all  things  pure,  by  the  sensitive  temper  of  his  clay 
to  hear  all  things  singing. 

That  he  is  no  saint,  that  he  often  treads  a  way- 
ward wanton  path,  like  the  rest  of  us,  is  but  to  say 
that  he  is  a  fellow  sinner,  a  joint  inheritor  of  the 
Fall;  but,  even  at  the  worst,  there  is  about  his  sinning 
a  childlike  irresponsibility,  an  essential  innocence  of 
wrong  intent,  that  differentiate  it  from  the  grown- 
up sinning  of  more  worldly  natures.  His  sins  are 
not  sins  of  the  bad  heart  or  of  the  selfish  spirit,  but 
sins  of  that  excess  of  sensibility,  "too  avid  of  earth's 
bliss,"  which,  after  all,  is  one  of  the  conditions  of 
his  being  a  poet  at  all;  sins  against  himself — poor 
wretch ! — rather  than  against  others. 

Yes,  "the  cost  and  pain!"  We  may  well  sigh 
for  that.  The  profession  of  a  poet  is  a  tragic  one — 
as  painful  and  tragic  as  motherhood.  That  "  making 
a  poet  out  of  a  man"  is  a  mysteriously  painful 
business  Is  there  no  other  way?  "No  way  but 
this,"  would  seem  to  be  Nature's  answer.     Yet  where 

[21] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

is  the  mother  that  would  renounce  her  motherhood  ? 
And  where  is  the  poet — though  he  be  a  Dante 
walking  the  circles  of  Hell  or  a  Villon  weaving 
ballades  in  the  shadow  of  the  gallows,  be  he  starving 
in  a  garret,  or  the  outcast  of  some  imperious  love,  or 
the  victim  of  some  inexorable  poison — where  is  the 
poet  that  would  change  his  lot  for  any  other? 
Always,  with  Virgil  again,  he  exclaims: 

Me  vero  primuni  dukes  ante  omnia  Musce, 
Quarum  sacra  fero  ingenti  per  cuss  us  amore, 
Accipiant,  cacique,  vias  el  sidera  monstrent 
Dejectus  solis  varios  lunceque  labores.  .  .  . 

"  Me  indeed,"  is  ever  his  cry,  "  first  and  before  all 
things  may  the  sweet  muses,  whose  priest  I  am  and 
whose  great  love  hath  smitten  me,  take  to  themselves 
and  show  me  the  pathways  of  the  sky,  the  stars,  and 
the  diverse  eclipses  of  the  sun,  and  the  moon's 
travails  ..." 

A  tragic,  but  how  lovely  and  pleasant  a  calling! 
His  task  to  read  the  ways  of  heaven  and  the  hearts 
of  men,  and  to  write  down  all  he  reads  in  fair-faced, 
sweet -voiced  words  that  come  to  him  singing 
strangely  out  of  the  air;  words  shaped  like  flowers 
and  fragrant  like  honey,  words  like  the  rustle  of 
woodlands  or  the  rising  of  the  moon,  words  swift  as 
birds  and  rooted  as  the  mountains,  words  stern 
as  bronze  and  soft  as  tears. 

l22] 


THE   PROFESSION   OF   POET 

Yes,  "the  cost  and  pain!"  But  if  the  poet 
have  his  sorrows,  he  has,  too,  his  words — his  beauti- 
ful words;  and  they  seem  to  him  worth  all  his 
sorrows.  For  as  Landor  has  said,  "Poets  are  in 
general  prone  to  melancholy;  yet  the  most  plaintive 
ditty  hath  imparted  a  fuller  joy,  and  of  longer  dura- 
tion, to  its  composer,  than  the  conquest  of  Persia 
to  the  Macedonian." 

Magic  consolation.     Who  shall  explain  it  ? 

And  always,  too,  be  he  a  Virgil  crowned  with 
Augustan  laurel,  or  a,Verlaine  in  the  slums  of  Paris, 
or  a  Francis  Thompson  sleeping  under  London 
Bridge,  he  carries  with  him  the  knowledge  of  a  sub- 
lime distinction,  of  a  romantic  destiny.  Sin-stained 
and  sorrowful,  hungry  and  in  mean  raiment,  yet 
is  he  high  of  heart  and  proud  of  glance,  for  is  he 
not  Nature's  confidant  ?  Is  he  not  a  servant  of  the 
gods? 


[23] 


II 

CONCERNING    FAIRY-TALES 

FAIRIES,  it  is  well  known,  cannot  cross  run- 
ning water;  but,  happily,  fairy  tales  can; 
and  it  is  strange,  even  mysterious,  how  these 
frail  shapes  of  stories,  frail  as  moonbeams,  have 
still  been  hardy  enough  to  make  their  w^ay  from 
land  to  land,  and  take  on  the  disguises  of  the  peoples, 
gentle  or  rough,  among  which,  like  thistledown,  they 
happen  to  have  settled, — frail,  yet  indestructible. 
The  arduously  wrought  masterpieces  of  many 
ancient  poets  have  disappeared  from  the  earth. 
There  must  have  been  very  great  poets  in  Babylon, 
but  their  names  are  no  longer  upon  the  lips  of  Time. 
The  great  poets  of  Egypt,  even,  are  lost  to  us;  and 
what  is  saved  to  us  of  Greece  is  little  compared  with 
what  is  lost.  Yet  these  fairy  tales,  mere  butterflies 
of  immortality,  have  continued  to  flit  from  shore  to 
shore,  and  from  age  to  age,  from  great-grandfather 
to  great-grandchild,  as  if  Time  were  loath  to  lay 
a  destroying  finger  upon  such  little  tender  things. 
Generally  speaking,  all  the  children  in  the  world 
are  told  the  same  fairy  tales, — little  boys  and  girls 
in  China  and  little  boys  and  girls  in  Clapham;  and 

1^4] 


CONCERNING  FAIRY-TALES 

the  tales  come  from  everywhere,  carried  to  and  fro 
on  the  four  winds.  Some  of  them  are  very  old,  old 
as  the  Bible;  and  some  of  them,  some  that  are  most 
familiar,  and  seem,  perhaps,  older  than  any  others, 
on  that  account,  were  made  comparatively  recently 
in  France  and  Denmark.  If  it  be  denied  that  there 
is  actually  a  fairyland  in  the  world,  always  open  to 
him  or  her  with  that  key  of  fancy  which  unlocks 
the  door,  it  is  not  to  be  disputed  that  there  are 
iairy-fale  lands,  countries  inhabited  with  peoples 
with  a  natural  gift  of  dreaming  and  making  up  tales. 
Greece  was  such  a  country,  with  its  gods  and  god- 
desses of  the  south,  its  nymphs,  its  dryads,  and  its 
satyrs.  Scandinavia — in  which,  for  our  present  pur- 
pose, one  may  include  Germany, — was  another 
such  country,  with  its  gods  and  goddesses  of  the 
north,  its  thundering  sagas,  its  nixies  and  its  gnomes, 
and  its  innumerable  shapes  of  elf  and  sprite.  Before 
either  Greece  or  Scandinavia,  was  there  not  "The 
Arabian  Nights," — with  Aladdin  and  Sinbad  and 
the  Forty  Thieves?  The  main  population  of 
Ireland,  to  this  day,  consists  of  fairies;  and  to  France 
we  owe  Charles  Perrault,  who  gave  us  Cinderella 
and  Puss  in  Boots;  Madame  de  Villeneuve,  who 
gave  us  Beauty  and  the  Beast;  and  Madame  d'Aul- 
noy,  who  gave  us  The  Yellow  Dwarf.  Perhaps 
England  is  the  only  country  in  the  world  that  has 
contributed  no  fairy  tale  of  any  importance,  with 

[25] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

the  exception  of  the  characteristic,  tradesmanlike 
fable  of  Dick  Whittington.  Such  apparently  indig- 
enous fairy  lore  as  England  possesses  it  stole  from 
Wales  and  Scotland, 

Even  America,  misrepresented,  as  it  is,  to  be  a 
business  country,  has  found  time  to  honour  Santa 
Claus,  and  to  give  us — Joel  Chanler  Harris, — I 
mean,  of  course,  "Brer  Rabbit."  Indeed,  America, 
strange  as  it  may  sound,  is  a  fairy-tale  country. 

What  is  a  fairy  tale?  Some  one  has  defined  a 
parable  as  an  earthly  story  with  a  heavenly  meaning. 
I  think  one  might  defme  a  fairy  tale  as  a  heavenly 
story  with  an  earthly  meaning,  for,  the  more  you 
study  fairy  tales,  the  more  you  will  find  that  they 
are,  one  and  all, — in  spite  of  their  paraphernalia 
of  impossibility, — fancies  illustrating  the  hard  facts 
of  life.  Maybe  the  reason  of  this  is  that  they  have 
grown  out  of  the  hard-wrought  experience  of  the 
people  nearest  to  the  earth;  namely,  those  who  till  it, 
who  sow  it,  and  reap  it, — the  people  unprotected  by 
wealth  from  the  terrors — and  the  wonders — of  the 
world. 

One  would  expect  fairy  tales  to  find  a  home,  of 
all  environments,  in  a  democracy, — because  they 
are  the  consolatory  fancies  of  the  downtrodden  and 
the  despairing,  the  dreams  of  the  dust.  As  I  have 
said,  it  is  in  the  dust  that  we  find  these  diamonds  of 
that  desperate  dust  that  is  man. 
[26] 


CONCERNING  FAIRY-TALES 

In  fact,  the  value  of  fairy  talcs  is  just  here:  they 
arc  the  dreams  of  "the  common  people."  No  rich 
man  could  make  a  fairy  tale, — according  to  the 
best-knowTi  examples, — for  the  simple  reason  that 
he  already  possesses  all  that  all  the  fairy  tales  can 
give  him.  A  fairy  talc  is  merely  a  paradox  made  of 
poverty  and  dreams.  How  do  all  fairy  tales  begin? 
Take  any  of  the  best-known.  With  a  beauty  in 
rags,  or  an  adventurous  barefooted  boy,  with  nothing 
but  his  wits.  How  do  all  fairy  tales  end?  The 
beauty  once  in  rags  becomes  a  queen  upon  a  throne. 
The  adventurous  barefooted  boy  becomes  a  grand 
vizier. 

In  short,  fairy  tales  represent  the  dreams  of  the 
poor  and  the  unhappy. 

Suppose,  now,  like  Cinderella,  you  were  the  most 
beautiful  member  of  the  family,  a  mere  child,  whose 
very  beauty  made  you  a  menace  to  two  elderly  ugly 
sisters,  who,  by  the  authority  and  opportunities  of 
oppression,  which  are  the  sweets  of  age,  hid  you 
away  in  the  kitchen.  Your  sisters,  being  ladies  of 
wealth  and  distinction,  and  much  older  than  you, 
arc  invited  to  parties.  You  hear  the  carriage  coming 
for  them  as  you  are  washing  the  dishes  in  the  base- 
ment; and  you  take  a  cracked  piece  of  mirror  from 
the  scullery  and  look  at  yourself,  and  you  say, — 
well,  you  say,  "What's  the  m.atter  with  the  world, 
when  my  two  ugly  sisters  are  driven  off  to  the  ball, 

[27] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

and  I  am  left  behind  washing  dirty  dishes?  O 
if  only  some  one,  some  fairy  prince,  for  instance, 
could  see  me  as  I  am!  "  No  sooner  have  you  sighed 
than  a  coach  all  made  of  crystal,  with  white  horses 
and  gold-braided  postilions,  drives  up  to  your  scul- 
lery, and — you  are  happy  ever  after. 

Or  suppose,  now,  that  you  were  the  third  son  of 
a  poor  miller,  and  your  father,  dying,  left  the  mill 
to  his  first  son,  a  horse  to  his  second  son,  and  to  you, 
his  third  son,  no  more  extensive  property  than  a  cat ! 
How  ruefully  you  would  look  at  your  little,  apparently 
ineffective,  un-negotiable  asset! — and  then  suppose 
that  your  cat  should  turn  into  a  genius  and  take  your 
affairs  into  his  hands  and  make  you  the  Marquis 
de  Carabas,  and  stop  the  king  in  his  coach  to  do 
you  honour,  and  give  you  the  king's  daughter  for  your 
wife, — how  then?  Well,  of  course,  it  would  be  a 
fairy  tale! 

Let  us  suppose,  again,  that  you  were  very  rich, 
with  palaces  and  every  form  of  luxury,  but,  at  the 
same  time,  your  head  happened  to  be  that  of  a  wild 
boar,  tusked  and  terrible,  in  spite  of  your  kind  heart ! 
How  you  would  dream  of  some  good  girl  that  would 
see  below  your  uncouthness,  see  the  gentle  reality 
of  your  true  self, — how  you  would  dream  of  her, 
enchanted,  as  you  were,  into  a  shape  so  cruelly 
misrepresentative. 

Again,  suppose  a  princess  came  and  sat  by  a  spring 
[28] 


CONCERNING   FAIRY-TALES 

in  the  forest,  and,  in  the  playfulness  of  her  heart, 
tossed  from  hand  to  hand  a  ball  of  gold,  and  sud- 
denly the  ball  of  gold  fell  into  the  spring!  And 
suppose  you  were  a  frog  at  the  bottom  of  the  spring, 
— really  a  prince,  but  apparently  a  frog, — wouldn't 
you  think  it  a  good  world  again,  if,  taldng  the  ball 
of  gold  in  your  mouth,  you  bubbled  up  to  the  surface 
and  the  princess,  and,  even  after  her  breaking  her 
promise  to  marry  you,  the  fairy-tale  king,  her  father, 
insisted  on  her  keeping  it, — in  spite  of  your  looking 
like  a  frog  and  being  cold  and  clammy  ? 

Once  more, — if  you  chanced  to  be  a  bear  right  out 
in  a  cold  winter  night,  with  nothing  to  eat  and  no 
one  to  love  you,  wouldn't  you  dream  of  a  warm 
little  cottage  in  the  wilderness, — in  it  a  widow 
woman  and  two  little  girls.  Snow-white,  by  name, 
and  Rose-red, — and  if,  by  chance,  you  found  such 
a  cottage  and  pushed  your  nose  into  the  door, 
wouldn't  you  believe  in  fairy  tales  if  the  widow 
took  you  in  and  bade  you  come  up  to  the  fire  and 
warm  out  the  snow  from  your  fur,  and  said  to  her 
little  daughters:  "Snow-white  and  Rose-red,  come 
here;  the  bear  is  quite  gentle;  he  will  do  you  no 
harm"  ? 

Indeed,  one  may  say,  parenthetically,  that  one  can 

imagine  no  happier  lot  than  that  of  a  bear  in  a  fairy 

tale.     Why,  I  wonder,  is  it  that  the  bear,  in  actual 

life  a  rugged,  uncompromising  animal,  should,  for 

[29] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

the  most  part,  be  represented  in  story  as  a  friendly, 
kindhearted  creature,  with  quite  a  touch  of  pathos 
about  him, — a  sort  of  great  big  lonely  lost  dog? 
With  one  or  two  exceptions,  he  so  figures  in  fairy 
tales,  from  the  white  bear  that  carried  the  poor 
husbandman's  daughter  to  the  "Land  East  of  the 
Sun  and  West  of  the  Moon"  to  perhaps  the  most 
fascinating  of  all  bears,  "  Kroof ,"  in  Mr.  Roberts's 
"  The  Heart  of  the  Ancient  Wood."  The  only  bears 
that  have  a  bad  name  in  story  are  the  three  bears 
who  almost  ate  up  little  Goldilocks  in  the  middle 
of  the  wood,  and  even  about  them  there  is  something 
engagingly  human.  Besides,  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  their  home  had  been  invaded  during  their 
absence,  their  porridge  eaten,  and  their  beds  slept  in. 
Fairy  tales  being  nothing  if  not  moralistic,  no  doubt 
the  meaning  here  is,  to  use  the  words  of  the  prince 
who  appeared  to  Beauty  in  her  dreams,  "  Do  not  let 
yourselves  be  deceived  by  appearances."  The  bear, 
so  to  say,  is  the  rough  diamond  of  the  fairy  tale.  He 
is  gruff  and  unpolished,  but  he  has  the  best  of  hearts. 
No  other  animal  is  treated  half  so  well  in  fairy  tales, 
although  the  fairy  tale  generally  has  a  kindness  for 
animals,  particularly  for  those,  like  the  bear,  whose 
appearance  of  ferocity  and  uncouthness  belies  them, 
or  those,  like  the  frog,  or  the  mouse,  or  the  ant, 
whose  ugliness  or  apparent  insignificance  subjects 
them  to  another  form  of  misunderstanding.  In  all  this 

[30] 


CONCERNING   FAIRY-TALES 

there  may  be  seen  a  primitive  naive  recognition  of 
the  bond  that  unites  all  living  things,  the  mysterious 
freemasonry  of  just  being  alive  together  in  a  strange 
world.  If  you  help  a  frog  out  of  his  difficulties, 
the  day  will  come  when  he  will  help  you.  Be  kind 
to  an  ant  in  trouble,  and,  when  the  cruel  queen  has 
demanded  that  you  count  all  the  ears  of  corn  by 
morning,  all  the  ants  in  the  world  will  come  and 
count  them  for  you.  Be  kind,  the  fairy  tales  seem 
to  say,  always  be  kind, — and  in  your  extremity  your 
kindness  to  the  unfortunate,  powerless  things  of  the 
earth  will  be  returned  to  you  a  hundredfold.  Super- 
ficially tests  of  insight,  the  tests  in  fairy  tales  are 
always  either  tests  of  goodness  or  of  courage. 
Whatever  menaces  you,  whatever  tempts  you,  be 
brave,  be  good, — and  all  will  be  well.  The  true 
insight  is  goodness.  Equipped  with  goodness,  there 
is  nothing  for  you  to  fear,  in  spite  of  all  the  illusory 
terror  of  the  world.  Only  be  good,  and,  therefore, 
brave,  and  no  wolf  shall  eat  you,  no  ogre  roast  you 
in  his  oven,  no  wizard  have  power  to  enchant  you, — 
except,  perhaps,  for  a  little  while:  just  to  give  the 
fairy  prince  or  princess  an  opportunity  of  breaking 
the  spell.  Be  good  and  brave,  and  even  your  wicked 
stepmother  or  your  ugly  sister  will  get  the  worst  of 
it  in  the  end. 

In  regard  to  what  I  have  been  saying  of  fairy- 
tale animals,  it  is  to  be  noted  that,  perhaps,  the  only 

[31] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 


animal  for  which  the  fairy  tale  has  no  kind  feeling 
is  the  wolf.  Actually,  I  suppose,  the  wolf  is  no 
more  wicked  than  the  bear,  yet  in  all  fairy  tales — 
and  particularly,  of  course,  in  "Little  Red  Riding- 
hood,"  he  is  always  the  symbol  of  the  terror  that 
devours.  The  wolf  may  be  said  to  be,  par  excellence, 
the  wicked  animal  of  the  fairy  tale.  Of  course, 
there  is  the  fox,  too,  but  the  fox  is  rather  a  symbol 
of  cunning  than  of  fear,  and  is  only  dangerous  to 
geese. 

I  said  that  fairy  tales  represent  the  dreams  of 
the  poor  and  the  unhappy.  To  the  poor  they 
bring  diamonds,  to  the  enslaved  worker  they  bring 
idleness.  In  short,  they  bring  to  us  all  The  Shining 
Impossible, — they  bring  us  the  remodelled  universe 
of  which  we  have  dreamed,  the  reconstructed  destiny. 
They   fulfil    Omar  Khayyam's  wish: — 

Would  I  could  shatter  it  to  bits  and  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire! 

In  a  fairy  tale  you  have  only  to  turn  the  ring  of 
an  old  sorrow,  or  rub  the  extinguished  lantern  of 
an  old  dream,  and  all  is  back  again, — palaces  with 
shining  windows,  a  thousand  servants,  and  the  loveliest 
princess  in  the  world.  You  have  only  to  be  named 
Aladdin,  and  all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto 
you. 

In  a  fairy  tale  the  most  beautiful  girl  in  the  world 

I32] 


CONCERNING  FAIRY-TALES 

may  die,  and  the  brier  rose  cover  up  her  castle  with 
its  cKmbing  bramble, — but  she  is  not  really  dead, — 
she  will  awake  again  in  a  hundred  years!  Even 
death  is  not  death  in  fairy  tales.  It  is  only — resur- 
rection. For  how  many  centuries  the  heart  of  man, 
leaning  over  the  bier  of  the  beloved,  has  dreamed: 
"  If  only  she  could  awake !  Is  there  no  power  in  this 
magic  universe  that  can  lay  the  finger  of  resurrection 
upon  these  closed  eyes,  this  stopped  heart, — lay  the 
finger  of  speech  upon  these  silent  lips?  " 

And,  in  answer  to  this  sigh  of  the  mortal  heart, 
the  mortal  brain  conceived  an  immortal  fancy,  and 
at  the  end  of  a  hundred  years  Sleeping  Beauty  at  last 
stirs  and  breathes  and  opens  her  everlasting  eyes. 

The  human  heart  ever  longs  for  the  impossible — 
for  the  joy  that  lasts  "for  ever  after  " ;  for  the  loveli- 
ness that  never  fades;  for  the  purse  that  is  never 
exhausted;  for  the  friend  that  is  always  true;  for 
the  device  that  will  do  away  with  all  the  inconveni- 
ences of  time  and  space,  and  land  you  in  Arabia  the 
moment  after  you  turn  the  screw  in  the  wooden 
horse,  or  China,  maybe,  if,  like  Gautier,  you  should 
say: — 

She  whom  I  love  at  present  is  in  China, 
She  dwells  with  her  aged  parents 
In  a  tower  of  white  porcelain, 
By  the  yellow  stream 
Where  the  cormorants  are! 

3  [33] 


ATTITUDES   AND  AVOWALS 

The  Shining  Impossible!  Obviously  nothing  else 
is  so  attractive  as  the  impossible;  and  the  power  of 
the  fairy  tale  over  the  human  mind  is  that,  whatever 
form  of  the  impossible  you  may  desire, — it  gives  it 
to  you.  It  is  only  necessary  for  you  to  lack  some- 
thing you  particularly  want, — in  a  fairy  tale, — and 
an  invisible  servant  will  bring  it  to  you,  even  though 
it  should  be  no  more  important  than  roast  duck. 
Indeed,  bearing  out  what  I  have  said, — that  the 
fairy  tale  is  the  poetry  of  the  poor, — it  is  relevant  to 
note  what  a  part  a  good  dinner  plays  in  a  fairy  tale. 
"I  was  anhungered,  and  ye  gave  me  meat!" 

For  instance,  when  Hansel  and  Gretel,  lost  in  the 
wild  wood,  came  at  length  upon  the  witch's  house, 
"made  of  bread  and  roofed  with  cakes,  the  window 
being  made  of  transparent  sugar,"  what  was  their 
good  fortune  but  an  answer  to  their  children's 
dream  of  hunger.  If  only  the  universe  will  give 
us  something  to  eat  1  That  has  been  the  cry  of  the 
poor  man  since  the  beginning.  And  the  fairy  tale 
answers  his  longing  with  banquets  where,  as  in 
the  story  of  ''The  Sleeping  Beauty,"  "there  was 
placed  before  everyone  a  magnificent  cover  with  a 
case  of  massive  gold,  wherein  were  a  spoon,  a  knife, 
and  a  fork,  all  of  pure  gold  set  with  diamonds  and 
rubies."  Fairy  tales  are  nothing  if  not  nouveau 
riche.     To  eat!    That  alone  is  a  fairy  tale.     To  eat! 

To  eat, — perchance  to  dream! 

[34] 


CONCERNING  FAIRY-TALES 

Eating,  indeed,  plays  a  most  important  part  in 
fairy  tales.  Sometliing  good  to  eat.  Cannibalism, 
if  necessary!  Perhaps  there  is  no  more  terrifying 
characteristic  feature  of  the  fairy  tale  than  the  step- 
mother or  the  mother-in-law  with  ogreish  tendencies. 
Take  the  case,  for  example,  of  Sleeping  Beauty. 
The  prince  must  needs  go  to  the  wars  and  leave  his 
wife  and  two  children  in  the  keeping  of  his  mother- 
in-law.  No  sooner  has  he  gone  than  she  bids  the 
cook  serve  up  little  Morning  for  her  dinner,  and  the 
cook,  being  gentle,  like  all  poor  people, — in  fairy 
tales, — serves  up  a  lamb  stew  instead, — and  so  on. 
In  the  story  of  "Hansel  and  Gretel"  there  is  the 
same  fear:  the  fear  of  little  children  that  some  one 
is  lying  in  wait — to  eat  them  up!  "Hansel,  put  out 
your  finger,  that  I  may  feel  if  you  are  getting  fat," 
said  the  old  witch;  and  "That'll  be  a  dainty  bite," 
she  mumbled  to  herself,  as  she  watched  Gretel 
asleep  in  her  bed.  "  What  shall  I  do  ?  "  cried  the 
queen  in  "The  Yellow  Dwarf";  "I  shall  be  eaten 
up!"  O  the  fears,  the  frightful  fears,  the  night- 
mares, of  children, — the  nightmares  of  a  world  still 
a  child! 

The  hopes,  the  fears,  the  wonders  of  the  world, — 
not  only  the  tears  in  mortal  things,  but  the  cruelty, — 
the  terror!  If  you  would  realize  the  dread  that  en- 
circles the  life  of  man,  read  any  of  the  simplest 
fairy  tales.     Read  "The  Babes  in  the  Wood,"  or 

[35] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

read  "Bluebeard."  The  dread  that,  mysteriously, 
is  planted  deep  in  our  souls;  dread  formless,  some- 
times, and  sometimes  fearfully  formed, — the  terrible 
dread  that  comes  of  being  alive!  Yet,  vivid  as  is 
this  dread,  no  less  vivid  is  the  dream  with  which  the 
fairy  tale  illumines  the  life  of  man.  After  all,  it  is 
a  thing  of  hope,  a  parable  of  promise;  even,  one 
might  say,  it  is  the  supernatural  version  of  a  super- 
natural world.  For  the  world  is  a  world — just 
because  it  is  supernatural;  and  it  goes  on  spinning 
its  way  among  the  other  stars  just  because  it  is — 3. 
fairy  tale. 

The  wonder  of  the  world!  Perhaps  that  is  the 
chief  business  of  the  fairy  tale, — to  remind  us  that 
the  world  is  no  mere  dustheap,  pullulating  with 
worms,  as  some  of  the  old-fashioned  scientists 
tried  to  make  us  believe;  but  that,  on  the  contrary, 
it  is  a  rendezvous  of  radiant  forces  forever  engaged 
in  turning  its  dust  into  dreams,  ever  busy  with  the 
transmutation  of  matter  into  mind,  and  mind  into 
spirit, — a  world,  too,  so  mysterious  that  anything 
can  happen,  or  any  dream  come  true.  One  might 
even  set  up,  and  maintain,  the  paradox  that  the 
fairy  tale  is  the  most  scientific  statement  of  human 
life;  for,  of  all  statements,  it  insists  on  the  essential 
magic  of  living, — the  mystery  and  wonder  of  being 
alive,  the  marvellous  happiness,  the  wondrous  sor- 
row, and  the  divine  expectations. 
[36] 


CONCERNING  FAIRY-TALES 

Those  fairy  tales  that  have  taken  the  strongest 
hold  upon  the  heart  and  the  imagination  of  the 
world  have  been  those  that  recognised  the  human 
need  of  supernatural  aid  and  alleviation.  The  earth 
cannot  get  along  all  by  itself.  It  is  always  in  need 
of  help  from  the  stars.  This  is  one  of  the  many 
morals  of  the  fairy  tale,  which  thus  gives  expression 
to  the  holy  hunger  of  the  human  heart.  A  precocious 
child  asked  me  the  other  day  for  a  list  of  the  twelve 
best  fairy  tales.  I  have  little  faith  in  such  lists  of 
anything,  but,  for  the  sake  of  my  child  friend,  I 
suggest  this  dozen:  "Beauty  and  the  Beast,"  "Cin- 
derella," "The  Sleeping  Beauty,"  "The  Three 
Bears,"  "Jack,  the  Giant  Killer,"  "Hop-o'-my- 
Thumb,"  "Sindbad,  the  Sailor,"  "The  Forty 
Thieves,"  "Goody  Two-shoes,"  "Aladdin,"  "Han- 
sel and  Gretel,"  and  "Little  Red  Riding-hood." 


37] 


Ill 

THE    LAUREL    OF    GOSSIP 

GOSSIP  is  the  social  reward  of  personality. 
Whether  it  be  playful  or  poison-fanged,  it 
it  is  a  recognition,  a  tribute,  one  of  the 
most  gratifying  forms  of  success.  So  long  as  one  is 
gossiped  about,  it  is  immaterial  what  shape  or  colour 
the  gossip  takes.  The  ugly  kind  is  perhaps  to  be 
preferred,  as  having  more  vitality,  more  motive 
power  of  circulation.  And,  of  course,  gossip  has 
nothing  to  do  with  truth,  good  or  bad.  That  is 
why  it  is — gossip. 

Gossip  neither  means  that  you  are  very  great  nor 
very  beautiful,  nor  even  very  bad;  all  that  it  means 
is  that  you  are  very — interesting.  You  may  be 
great  and  beautiful  and  bad  all  in  one,  yet  never 
get  gossiped  about.  Here  is  one  of  the  mysteries 
of  gossip — its  choice  of  subject.  Gossip  is  most 
capricious  in  this  respect.  The  mere  fact  of  being 
public  or  conspicuous  will  not  necessarily  expose 
you  to  its  flattering  selection.  Time  and  again,  we 
see  conspicuous  figures  publicly  stealing  the  horse 
without  comment,  whereas  if  some  humble  individ- 
ual, such  as  you  or  I,  were  to  take  a  private  peep 

[38] 


THE   LAUREL   OF   GOSSIP 


over  the  hedge — how  the  tongues  would  go  a-wag- 
ging.  Some  people  can  commit  the  most  pains- 
taking violations  of  convention,  be  most  conscien- 
tiously startling  in  all  their  ways,  yet  no  one  pays 
the  least  attention;  whereas  let  little  So-and-So, 
once  in  a  virtuous  winter,  forsake  the  straight  and 
narrow  path,  and  the  whole  town  is  ringing  with  the 
news.  The  reason  is  that  there  is  "something 
about"  little  So-and-So  that  makes  people  fond  of 
discussing  him.  Wherever  mutual  acquaintances 
are  gathered  together,  you  are  sure  to  hear  his  name. 
His  friends  never  forget  to  inquire  about  him  from 
each  other,  and  the  latest  news  of  him  is  always 
in  demand.  If  one  asks  why,  one  can  only  fall  back 
on  that — something  about  him. 

What  is  that  "something  about  them"  which 
seems  to  make  some  men  and  women — from  their 
very  cradles — gossip  chosen  ?  It  is  hard  to  say,  but 
probably  the  secret  lies  in  their  possession  of  some 
magnetic  vitality  which  gives  their  actions  a  signifi- 
cance beyond — precisely  the  same  actions  of  others. 
They  seem,  somehow,  more  real  than  others,  they 
awake  in  us  a  dramatic  expectancy,  and  all  they  do 
takes  on  a  dramatic  value.  In  fact,  they  are,  in  one 
way  or  another,  personalities,  and  their  experiences 
become  socially  symbolic.  If  these  experiences  fall 
short  of  what  is  expected  of  their  personalities,  it 
is  the  business  of  gossip  to  invent  experiences  more 

[39] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

in  keeping.  And  thus  arises  that  personal  legend — 
that  legend  of  oneself! — a  legend  which  is  founded 
not  on  what  we  have  actually  been  and  done,  but 
on  the  dramatic  suggestiveness  of  our  personalities — 
what  we  look  as  if  we  ought  to  have  been  and  ought 
to  have  done. 

The  disparity  between  this  legend  and  the  actual 
truth  about  ourselves  will,  of  course,  affect  us  accord- 
ing to  our  temperaments.  If  nature  has  made  us 
sensitive  to  calumny,  the  legend  may  well  give  us 
more  pain  than  pleasure,  and  the  laurel  of  gossip 
become  a  veritable  crown  of  thorns;  but  those  whom 
nature  has  mysteriously  chosen  for  gossip  are,  as  a 
rule,  protectively  constituted,  not  only  to  withstand 
it,  but  to  enjoy  it.  Such  take  an  impersonal  delight 
in  the  methods  of  the  invisible  artist  so  industriously 
engaged  in  building  their  legend,  and  his  ingenious 
mendacities  awake  their  admiration  and  curiosity 
rather  than  their  anger.  They  are  being  so  evi- 
dently used  as  so  much  artistic  material  in  his 
hands  that  the  right  of  private  protest  hardly 
seems  to  belong  to  them.  They  are  already  being 
used  as  writers  of  historical  novels  use  historical 
figures  for  their  fictions,  adapting  and  distorting 
their  characters  and  their  actions  according  to  their 
artistic  necessities.  After  all,  they  are  only  being 
treated  during  their  lives  as  such  figures,  say,  as 
Napoleon  and  Byron  and  Lady  Hamilton  are  treated 
[40] 


THE  LAUREL  OF   GOSSIP 


after  their  deaths,  material  which  the  humblest 
writer  is  free  to  magnify  or  maltreat  as  he  has  a  mind 
to.  Gossip  having  chosen  them  for  her  own,  they 
no  longer  belong  merely  to  themselves,  and  hence- 
forward the  actual  truth  about  them  as  known  to 
themselves  and  their  intimates  is  neither  here  nor 
there.  The  muse  of  gossip  has  taken  them  and  their 
story  in  hand,  and,  if  they  are  sensible,  they  will 
wear  the  laurel  she  has  bestowed  with  becoming 
vanity.  Think  how  dreary  it  would  be — not  to  be 
gossiped  about.  And  that  happens  to  quite  num- 
bers of  people,  who  lead  soured  and  disappointed 
lives  in  consequence,  and  absurdly  take  it  out  on  the 
more  fortunate,  by,  of  all  things,  gossiping  about 
them — thus  paradoxically  adding  to  the  very  laurels 
they  envy. 

It  is  the  thought  of  these  depressed  contributory 
people  that  need  be  the  only  discomfort  in  the 
wearing  of  this  laurel,  which  they  and  the  like 
of  them  have  woven  for  our  chosen  brows.  The 
processes  of  gossip,  like  the  processes  of  many 
other  beautiful  products,  hardly  bear  looking  into. 
Gossip  resembles  fame,  of  which  indeed  it  is  a 
form,  in  the  insignificance  of  the  individual  units 
which  swell  together  into  such  a  brilliant  grand  total 
of  glory.  What  a  lovely  thing  to  a  king,  or  a  hero, 
or  an  orator  is  the  rapt,  adoring  multitude,  hanging, 
dog-like,  upon  their  every  look  and  word,  so  long 

[41] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

as  it  remains  one  compact,  impersonal  mob  of  immor- 
tality— but  stop  to  think  of  the  constituent  parts,  the 
thousand  Uttlenesses  that,  by  mere  accumulation, 
have  resulted  in  this  beaming  bigness,  and  glory 
wears  for  a  moment  a  distasteful  and  indeed  ridicu- 
lous aspect.  There  is  perhaps  in  all  that  vast 
multitude  not  one  person  whose  praise  is  individually 
of  value,  but  a  thousand  such  nothings  make  the 
something  we  call — fame. 

So  with  gossip.  It  is,  indeed,  distasteful  to  think 
how  this  beautiful  laurel  that  rustles  and  whispers  so 
bravely  about  our  ears  came  to  be,  to  think  of  the 
countless  small  and  dirty  hands  that  wove  incessantly 
mean  lie  on  lie,  the  repulsive  maggot -like  activity 
of  the  myriad  infinitesimal  lives,  the  social  infusoria, 
that,  although  their  very  existence  was  invisible 
and  inaudible  to  us,  busied  themselves  with  our 
magnetic  names. 

Happily  we  are  seldom  brought  into  conscious 
contact  with  the  repulsive  makers  of  gossip  them- 
selves. Their  work,  like  that  of  many  other  noisome 
industries,  is  done  in  secret,  and,  as  we  eat  pate  de 
foie  gras,  without  our  minds  being  haunted  by  the 
diseased  geese  from  whom  it  came,  so  we  enjoy  the 
gossip  about  us  without  a  thought  of  the  similar 
animals  that  have  produced  it. 

That  art,  we  know,  is  the  greatest  which  conceals 
itself,  and  the  art  of  gossip  goes  even  further— it 

[42] 


THE  LAUREL  OF   GOSSIP 

conceals  the  artist.  That  he  should  be  concealed 
is  indeed  a  necessity  of  an  art,  which  is  not  only  dis- 
tasteful in  its  processes,  but  apt  even  to  be  dangerous 
in  its  practice.  It  is  not  everyone  that  appreciates 
the  masterpieces  of  this  art  in  the  proper  spirit. 
Like  many  inartistic  critics,  some  allow  moral  and 
personal  considerations  to  deflect  their  judgment, 
and  this  most  significant  of  social  tributes,  instead 
of  gratifying  them  as  it  should  do,  fills  them  with 
righteous  indignation.  Here  the  microscopic  small- 
ness  of  the  artist  is  his  salvation.  On  whom  shall 
this  indignation  be  vented?  The  victim,  as  he,  of 
course,  erroneously  regards  himself,  looks  around, 
but  in  vain.  More  than  likely  the  artist  he  burns  to 
castigate  is  at  his  elbow,  but  he  is  so  small  that  he 
escapes  notice,  and  so  all  that  beautiful  anger 
wastes  its  sweetness  on  the  desert  air,  and  disturbs 
no  one  but  the  angry  one  himself. 

Yet  there  are  occasions,  one  admits,  when  the 
artist  seems  to  have  gone  a  little  too  far,  and  when 
one  cries  out,  "O  this  is  too  much!"  occasions 
when  to  gain  his  effects  he  seems  to  have  passed  the 
bounds  of  artistic  privilege,  by  inventions  so  bcwilder- 
ingly  base  that  even  a  name  inured  to  outrage  may 
confess  itself  momentarily  stung  with  the  sense  of 
human  meanness.  Yet  even  here,  after  the  first 
shock  is  over,  indignation  subsides  into  astonishment 
and  curiosity;  astonishment  at  the  impudent  audacity 

[43] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

of  the  thing,  and  curiosity  as  to  what  manner  of 
people  are  these  social  criminals  who  thus  make 
it  their  strange  business  to  lie  about  others.  How 
strange  it  must  be  to  be  so  interested  in  other  people, 
and  people,  as  a  rule,  quite  unaware  of  our  existence ! 
Occasionally  some  indisputable  member  of  this 
criminal  class  is  pointed  out  to  us — surely  by  no 
possible  stretch  of  the  imagination  can  we  conceive 
ourselves  caring  to  gossip  about  them!  Their  pri- 
vate lives  may  be  the  colours  of  the  rainbow,  they 
may  be  positively  lurid  with  proven  infamy,  yet 
is  it  no  concern  of  ours.  They  simply  don't  interest 
us.  How  strange,  is  it  not,  that  we  should  so  absorb- 
ingly interest  them. 

But  who  shall  dictate  to  an  artist  his  choice  of 
material? — and  it  must  never  be  lost  sight  of,  how- 
ever distasteful  or  eccentric  his  methods,  that  the 
gossip  is  first  and  last  an  artist,  and,  like  all  artists, 
seldom  understood  by  the  world  at  large.  Only 
by  keeping  firm  hold  on  this  truth  can  we  hope  to 
gain  any  light  on  the  psychology  of  this  strange 
being.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  stories  he  puts 
into  circulation  about  his  subjects  are  usually  dis- 
creditable in  their  nature.  He  seldom  has  any  good 
about  them  to  tell.  Seldom — one  might  say  never — 
does  he  take  us  into  a  corner  to  tell  us  in  mysterious 
confidence  that  So-and-So  is  devoted  to  his  wife, 
or  that  So-and-So' s  private  life  is  notorious — for 
[44] 


THE  LAUREL  OF  GOSSIP 


its  virtues.  And  why  not  ?  It  is  not  that  he  means 
any  harm — it  would  be  a  great  injustice  to  suggest 
that — but  that,  as  an  artist,  he  has  reaHsed  that  bad 
stories  are  more  effective  than  good.  People  simply 
won't  listen  to  good  about  other  people.  It  bores 
them.  Somehow  or  other  it  fails  to  catch  the  eye. 
It  is  next  to  impossible  to  create  an  interesting 
scandal  out  of  the  virtues  of  one's  subject.  A 
good  life  lived  in  secret  will  remain  a  secret  for  all  the 
efforts  of  well-meaning  gossip  to  give  it  publicity. 
Deplore  it  or  explain  it  as  we  will,  black  is  more 
interesting  than  white,  and  humanity  demands 
scandals  of  its  great  ones.  Those  who  know  the 
truth  have  told  us  again  and  again  that  the  devil 
is  not  so  black  as  he  is  painted,  but  no  one  believes 
them.  No  one  wishes  to  beheve  them.  In  fact, 
nothing  is  more  disillusioning  to  popular  sentiment 
than  the  occasional  discovery  of  the  distressing 
goodness  of  famous  naughty  people.  They  were 
not  so  naughty  after  all,  and  interest  in  them  imme- 
diately declines.  What  is  the  reason  of  this  popular 
preference  for  naughtiness  rather  than  saintliness 
in  its  heroes?  Perhaps  Hafiz  put  his  finger  on  it, 
when,  hurling  defiance  at  the  scandal-mongers  of 
Shiraz,  he  wrote: 

Talk  to  mc  not  about  the  Book  of  Sin, 

For,   friend,   to   tell   the   truth. 
That  is  the  book  I  would  be  written  in — 


45] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 


It  is  so  full  of  youth. 
And,  mark  me,  friend,  when  on  the  Judgment  Day 

The  black  book  and  the  white 

Are  angel-opened  there  in  Allah's  sight, 
For  all  to  read  what's  writ — 

Just  watch  how  lonely  the  white  book  will  be! 
But  the  black  book,  wherein  is  writ  my  name— 
My  name,  my  shame,  my  fame — 

With  busy  readers  all  besieged  you'll  see, 
Yea!  almost  thumbed  away, 
So  interesting  it! 

It  is  so  full  of  youth !  Yes!  distressing  as  it  may 
be  to  moralists,  the  world  at  large  would  seem  to 
associate  a  saving  virtue  of  romantic  vitality  with 
what  it  significantly  speaks  of  as  the  "generous 
errors"  of  the  laurelled  sinner,  and,  whatever  its 
formal  professions  of  faith,  is  at  heart  one  with 
Aucassin,  when  he  made  his  famous  reply  to  those 
who  threatened  him  with  hell-fire  if  he  persisted 
in  his  love  for  the  Saracen  Nicolete,  she  whose  feet 
were  so  white  that  the  daisies  seemed  black  beside 
them. 

"Paradise!"  he  laughs,  "in  paradise  what  have 
I  to  win?  Therein  I  seek  not  to  enter,  but  only  to 
have  Nicolete,  my  sweet  lady  that  I  love  so  well. 
For  into  paradise  go  none  but  such  folk  as  I  shall 
tell  thee  now:  Thither  go  these  same  old  priests, 
and  halt  old  men  and  maimed,  who  all  day  and 
night  cower  continually  before  the  altars  and  the 
[46] 


THE  LAUREL   OF   GOSSIP 


crypts;  and  such  folk  as  wear  old  amices  and  old 
clouted  frocks,  and  naked  folk  and  shoeless,  and 
covered  with  sores,  perishing  of  hunger  and  thirst, 
and  of  cold,  and  of  little  ease.  These  be  they  that  go 
into  paradise;  with  them  have  I  naught  to  make. 
But  into  hell  would  I  fain  go;  for  into  hell  fare  the 
goodly  clerks,  and  goodly  knights  that  fall  in  tourneys 
and  great  wars,  and  stout  men-at-arms,  and  all  men 
noble.  With  these  would  I  liefly  go.  And  thither 
pass  the  sweet  ladies  and  courteous  that  have  two 
lovers,  or  three,  and  their  lords  also  thereto.  Thither 
go  the  gold,  and  the  silver,  and  cloth  of  vair,  and 
cloth  of  gris,  and  harpers,  and  makers,  and  the 
princes  of  this  world.  With  these  I  would  gladly 
go,  let  me  but  have  with  me  Nicolete,  my  sweetest 
lady." 

Strange  that  centuries  of  Christian  piety  have 
failed  to  make  an  interesting  heaven,  and  it  is  to  be 
feared  that  the  saints  who  have  most  successfully 
touched  the  imaginations  of  humanity  are  those  who, 
like  Saint  Augustine,  had  first  to  their  credit  an 
entertaining  record  as  sinners. 

Humanity  would  seem  particularly  to  demand 
such  credentials  of  its  artists,  its  poets,  painters, 
musicians,  and  actors.  Even  a  popular  preacher  is 
none  the  worse  off  for  a  soupgon  of  whispered 
frivolity.  The  world  will  forgive  its  artists  anything 
but  propriety.     Stupid  people  occasionally  rise  up 

[47] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

mistakenly  to  whitewash  the  memories  of  the  erring 
great.  They  write  books  to  prove  that  Burns  was 
a  woman-hater,  Poe  a  teetotaller,  and  Byron  a  much- 
mis-represented  family  man.  Fortunately  for  the 
poets  in  question,  these  iconoclastic  efforts  have  been 
in  vain,  and  the  original  legends  remain  in  all  their 
pristine  satanic  hues.  The  gaiety  of  nations  is  not 
to  be  mocked  in  this  way.  If  such  misguided 
enthusiasts  would,  instead,  make  for  us  a  discovery 
of  some  new  Highland  Mary  hitherto  overlooked  by 
Burns' s  biographers,  or  tell  us  all  about  the  mysteri- 
ous drug  that  inspired  "The  Raven,"  or  prove 
beyond  a  disappointing  doubt  that  the  wicked 
English  milord  did  really  maintain  a  seraglio  at 
Venice,  then  we  should  be  all  ears  of  gratitude. 
But  to  rob  a  poet  of  his  bad  name!  that  is  indeed  a 
dull  and  doubtful  service. 

No  ambitious  artist  who  knows  his  business  fears 
gossip.  Quite  the  contrary.  What  he  does  fear  is 
that  he  may  escape  it,  that  it  may  pass  him  indiffer- 
ently by.     Here  is  a  true  story. 

Once  upon  a  time  there  was  a  certain  great  por- 
trait-painter of  whom  terrible  stories  were  told. 
He  was  a  very  picturesque,  romantic-looking  man, 
and  his  love  affairs  were  said  to  be  as  the  sands  upon 
the  seashore.  Mysterious  wickedness  beyond  the 
imagination  of  man  was  attributed  to  him.  His 
hidden  life — O  well!  don't  let  us  speak  of  it. 
[48] 


THE  LAUREL   OF   GOSSIP 


Respectable  houses,  one  was  told  in  a  whisper, 
were  hermetically  sealed  to  him.  Yet  one  noticed 
that  one  met  him  ever}'^vhere.  Daughters  were 
hidden  away  in  cupboards  at  his  approach,  young 
men  were  warned  against  his  influence,  and  really 
he  was  not  to  be  spoken  of.  Yet  everywhere,  and 
all  the  time,  no  one  talked  of  anyone  else;  and 
every  beautiful  woman,  whose  husband  was  rich 
enough,  had  him  to  paint  her  portrait.  Well,  one 
night  he  and  a  friend  were  sitting  together  over 
their  coffee  in  his  studio,  silently  smoking  their 
cigarettes.     Suddenly  the  friend  broke  the  silence. 

"Forgive  me,"  he  said,  "but  there  is  a  question  I 
have  long  wished  to  ask  you." 

"  Go  ahead,"  answered  the  painter. 

"Well,"  continued  the  friend,  "you  seem  to  be 
always  at  work,  or  at  parties.  I  want  to  know  when 
on  earth  you  find  time  to  lead  the  awful  life  everyone 
speaks  of." 

The  artist  looked  up  with  a  scared  expression, 
but  he  tried  to  smile. 

"Don't  say  you  have  discovered  my  secret," 
he  said  nervously. 

"Secret!  I  should  hardly  call  it  a  secret,  old 
man,"  replied  his  friend.  "Even  you  yourself 
must  have  heard  something  of  the  gossip." 

"O  I  see!  "  rejoined  the  artist,  evidently  re- 
lieved. 

4  [49] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"O  nothing!"  And  then,  evidently  changing 
his  mind,  the  artist  turned  again  to  his  friend. 
"Listen,"  he  said.  "If  I  tell  you  a  secret,  which 
I  feel  rather  inclined  to  confide,  will  you  promise 
never,  under  any  provocation,  to  divulge  it?" 

The  friend  promised. 

"Well,  then,"  the  artist  proceeded,  "I  am  going 
to  reveal  to  you  a  secret,  the  exposure  of  which  would 
mean  my  utter  ruin,  a  secret  known  only  to  three 
or  four  of  my  nearest  friends,  a  secret  on  which  my 
whole  artistic  success,  and  my  very  livelihood, 
depend " 

"  It  is  safe  with  me,"  interpolated  the  friend. 

"I  believe  so,  though  it  is  one  you  will  j&nd  it 
hard  to  keep.     It  is  this — I  am  an  impostor " 

"An  impostor!" 

"Yes!  the  infamous  rumours,  the  mysterious 
scandals,  the  terrible  private  Hfe,  all — all — an 
imposture,  a  cheat,  a  farce,  a  conspiracy " 

"I  don't  understand." 

"Simply  this.  There  is  not  one  word  of  truth 
in  all  the  stories,  and  the  whole  fable  is  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  an  advertising  device  hit  upon  a 
few  years  ago  in  a  moment  of  despair,  I  might 
almost  say  of  starvation " 

"  Go  on." 

"Well,  I  had  painted  for  years  without  recog- 
1.50] 


THE  LAUREL   OF   GOSSIP 


nition,  painted  far  better  than  I  paint  nowadays. 
But  it  all  went  for  nothing.  Outside  a  few  acquaint- 
ances, I  remained  unknown  and  unappreciated. 
Then  one  day  a  cynical  friend  of  mine  came  to  me 
and  said:  'What  you  need  is  to  get  talked  about.' 
'No  doubt,'  I  answered,  'but  how  is  it  to  be  done?' 
My  friend  thought  a  moment.  'I  have  a  plan,' 
he  said,  'if  only  you  will  let  me  carry  it  out.'  'Any- 
thing,' I  answered,  for  I  was  desperate.  'Will  you 
give  me  permission  to  lie  about  you?'  asked  my 
friend.  'Lie  about  me!  '  I  asked  in  astonishment. 
'Yes!  lie  broadcast — wonderful,  lurid,  picturesque 
lies,  dissipation,  affairs  with  women,  drink,  drugs, 
anything  and  everything.  If  you  will,  with  your 
confounded  romantic  looks,  I'll  guarantee  you 
fame  and  all  the  sitters  you  want  within  a  year. ' " 

The  artist  paused, 

"Well?"    prompted   his   listener. 

"As  I  say,  I  was  desperate,  ready  for  anything — 
so  I  consented,  and " 

"And?" 

"My  friend  kept  his  word.  He  got  two  or  three 
friends  to  help  him,  and  the  little  band  lied  about 
me  like  Trojans,  sowing  broadcast  the  most  diaboli- 
cal inventions,  till,  at  last — well,  the  sitters  came." 

"Is  that  all?" 

"Yes!  that's  all — only  remember  your  promise, 
remember  that  the  moment  the  truth  is  out,  the 

[5r] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

moment  the  world  suspects  the  milk-white  innocence 
and  dove-like  domesticity  of  my  actual  life,  the 
game  is  up  and  my  day  is  done." 

This  is  a  true  story;  and  so  it  is,  thanks  to  those 
humble  little  unrequited  servants  of  genius  we  call 
gossips,  that  the  majority  of  laurels  are  woven  and 
won. 


52] 


IV 

CLOUDS 

IN  none  of  his  works  does  that  tremendous 
artist  Nature  reveal  himself  so  magically 
as  in  the  airy  transformations  and  changing 
harmonies  of  the  clouds.  Mighty  and  mystical 
master,  his  art  is  here  seen  at  its  strangest  and  its 
simplest.  How  few  and  intangible  his  materials; 
how  apparently  simple  his  methods — vapour  and 
currents  of  air  and  the  old  sun  and  moon;  and  yet 
what  an  impressive  and  mysterious  beauty  he 
creates  from  them,  there  on  the  canvas  of  the  sky! 
Nowhere  else  is  he  seen  so  triumphantly  as  an  artist 
of  pure  effect.  Elsewhere  we  may  meet  with  him 
as  a  melodramatist  of  the  everlasting  hills,  a  scene- 
painter  of  gorge  and  gloom  and  the  white  torrent; 
but  in  creating  such  effects  he  has  employed  materials 
so  enduring  as  to  be  called  everlasting.  Nature 
will  be  his  own  Salvator  Rosa  millions  of  years  after 
the  name  of  Salvator  Rosa  has  faded  from  the 
memory  of  the  universe,  because  his  Salvator  Rosas 
are  made  of  that  veritable  rock  and  lightning  and 
ancient  darkness  which  the  Italian  could  only  imitate 
with  perishable  paint-pot  and  canvas.  But  when 
Nature,  so  to  speak,  turns  Titian  and  Turner,  he 

[53] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

is  at  a  disadvantage  in  his  materials,  for  the  pig- 
ments of  the  clouds  are  volatile  as  a  perfume,  and 
fade  even  as  the  artist  lays  them  on  morning  or 
evening  sky.  With  the  invisible  artist  of  the  clouds 
it  is  now  or  never  for  his  effects,  and  the  pictures  he 
paints  are  gone  even  as  he  paints  them,  never  to 
be  seen  again.  Perhaps  only  one  eye  in  all  the  world 
has  seen  them,  some  lonely  figure  lost  in  the  twi- 
light- 
One  eye  alone  in  all  Verona  cared  for  the  soft 
sky. 

His  pictures  must  pass  like  a  strain  of  music.  Effect, 
pure  effect;  not  effect  caught  and  fossilised  as  in 
sculpture,  or  arrested  awhile  as  in  painting,  but 
effect  alive  and  changing  every  moment,  effect  musi- 
cal in  its  development — music,  indeed,  made  visible 
in  colour. 

All  human  art  must  pass  away,  but  most  of  it 
has  a  certain  spurious  stability.  If  you  are  rich, 
you  can  buy  a  Titian  for  the  woman  you  love,  but 
you  cannot  buy  her  a  sunrise.  Even  while  you  run 
to  fetch  her  to  look  at  it,  it  is  gone.  He  will  not 
even  wait  while  she  dons  a  morning  wrapper, — 
this  arrogant  Whistler  of  the  sky.  Transitory  as 
emotion,  it  has  the  same  pathos  as  all  poignant 
passing  things,  this  art  of  the  heavens,  the  same 
keen  excitement. 

[54] 


CLOUDS 

Perhaps  we  should  soon  learn  to  tire  of  it  if  it 
were  not  so  mobile.  Even  some  masterpieces  have 
hung  too  long  upon  the  walls  of  time.  It  is  this 
expressive  movement  of  sensitive  vapour,  this  unfore- 
seen touch  of  change  here  and  there — a  shining 
finger  seen  for  a  moment  and  then  withdrawn, — 
this  disposition  and  redisposition  of  masses,  this 
slow  womblike  trouble  of  darkness  and  light,  this 
sudden  avenue  of  splendid  swords,  this  calm  over- 
ture of  glory,  these  marching  trumpets  of  light — 
this  radiant  issue  of  immortal  fire :  it  is  in  such  effects 
as  this  that  the  mysterious  art  of  the  sky  o'ertops 
the  arts  of  earth.  Fading  as  it  is  fashioned,  it  has 
a  power  to  move  the  heart  and  stir  the  senses,  and, 
above  all,  to  thrill  and  summon  the  soul,  which 
surely  no  earthly  arts  can  claim.  With  no  formulae, 
no  conventions,  no  traditional  motives,  classically  to 
command  us — absolutely  without  notation  of  any 
kind — it  is  yet  able  to  say  all  that  the  human  heart 
has  ever  felt  or  ever  dreamed. 

There  is  no  emotion  of  whatever  kind  that  you 
cannot,  one  time  or  another,  find  expressed  for  you 
in  the  sky.  If  you  are  sad  and  lonely,  and  your 
heart  almost  breaking  with  the  fine-drawn  music 
of  regret,  look  at  yonder  sky.  You  are  not  so  sad 
and  lonely  as  that.  Why,  you  almost  forget  your 
own  sorrow  as  you  gaze  on  that  exquisite  sorrow. 

Would  you  have  silence,  would  you  dream  of  a 

[55] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

peace  made  of  mother-of-pearl  and  the  evening 
star:  there  again  is  the  sky! 

And  would  you  be  pure,  and  firm  of  faith,  and 
free  as  the  boundless  air — look  at  the  sky. 

On  the  other  hand,  did  you  ever  see  a  face  so 
wicked  as  is  sometimes  the  face  of  the  sky,  so  sinister 
with  hushed  menace,  so  livid  with  ambushed  evil, 
so  truculently  brutal  with  thunder? 

There  is  nothing  that  you  can  dream  of  or  dread 
that  is  not  pictured  in  the  sky,  with  a  force  and 
intensity  such  as  elsewhere  you  must  seek  in  dreams. 
Black  continents  of  monsters  jawed  with  fire; 
lagoons  of  shining  ether;  a  star,  safe  and  silent,  like 
a  candle  burning  by  a  sleeping  child;  floating  islands 
rimmed  with  silver;  bergs  of  saffron  fire  drifting 
in  the  solar  sea;  gardens  and  golden  gates  and 
towers  of  snow;  armies  with  drums  of  darkness  and 
terrible  spears;  a  dove  all  alone  in  heaven;  bosoms 
filled  with  roses;  cataracts  of  moonshine  falling 
from  cloud  to  cloud;  peacocks  made  of  stars;  gon- 
falons of  flaming  dew;  and  battlements  thronged 
with  unearthly  faces.  .  .  . 

There  is,  indeed,  no  such  picture-book  as  this 
picture-book  of  the  clouds;  but  it  is  not  by  such 
concrete  shapes  of  fancy  as  these  that  the  art  of 
the  sky  seriously  takes  hold  of  us — these  merely 
imitative,  one  might  say  punning,  simulacra,  acci- 
dental and  unmeaning  as  faces  seen  in  the  fire; 

[56] 


CLOUDS 

it  is  rather  by  pictorial  moods  of  expressiveness 
too  jfluid  to  be  called  symbolic,  great  abstract 
schemes  of  modulated  radiance,  that,  like  some  of 
the  greatest  pictures,  mean  nothing  but — Eternity; 
Eternity — or  some  other  words  hardly  less  simply 
profound:  in  its  power,  in  fact,  of  expressing  the 
trancelike  dreams  of  the  spirit,  moods  of  the  imagina- 
tion, and  even  states  of  the  mind. 

Perhaps  the  strangest  tiling  about  this  art  of  the 
sky  is  its  power  over  the  soul.  With  all  its  pomp 
and  magnificence  of  colour,  it  is  never  sensual.  Its 
glories  and  its  revelries,  though  bright  as  a  Persian 
carpet  and  Dionysiac  as  the  feast  of  Belshazzar, 
seem  somehow  purged  of  earthly  significance. 
Addressing  the  mere  mortal  eye  with  such  prismatic 
eloquence,  their  true  message  seems  somehow  to 
our  immortal  part.  The  beauty  of  the  earth  too 
often  demoralises,  hke  the  beauty  of  some  sensual 
painter;  but  no  one  ever  was  demoralised  by  looking 
at  the  sky.  Its  pictures  are  like  those  of  some 
Hebrew  prophet,  or  those  in  the  Book  of  Revelation. 
They  have  all  the  coloured  magnificence  of  earth, 
yet  they  mean  nothing  but  heaven.  There  is 
something  mysteriously  pure  about  this  artist  of 
the  sky. 

But  it  is  not  merely  the  purity  of  the  spirit  to 
which  he  answers;  it  is  perhaps  especially  the  pro- 
digious perspective  of  its  ambition  that  he  makes 

[57] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 


visible;  for  another  strange  thing  about  the  sky 
is  that  it  never  daunts,  but  only  corroborates,  the 
soul.  Of  course  there  are  now  and  again  times 
when  a  solitary  man  lying  on  an  empty  moorland, 
and  looking  up  into  the  sky,  is  momentarily 
impressed  and  overborne  with  his  mortal  insignifi- 
cance; but  the  impression  is,  as  I  said,  momentary, 
speedily  to  be  followed  by  an  exultant  sense  of  his 
immortal  significance — his  mastery  over,  his  spiritual 
possession  of,  all  that  infinite  stillness  and  power. 
The  arch  of  the  sky  is  not  really  greater  than  the 
arch  of  his  brow,  and  there  is  a  starry  vastness  within 
his  small  skull  that  binds  stronger  bands  than  those 
of  Orion.  It  is  only  when  a  man  looks  at  the  earth 
that  he  is  afraid.  So  soon  as  he  looks  at  the  sky, 
that  irresistible  serenity  of  spiritual  power,  which 
he  has  either  learned  from  the  sky  or  read  into  it, 
returns  to  him.  He  feels — nay,  he  knows — that 
this  sky  is  but  the  provocative  avenue  of  his  destiny, 
the  triumphal  highway  of  his  conquering  soul,  hung 
with  rosy  garlands  of  clouds. 

No  argument  for  the  immortality  of  the  soul  can 
compete  with  the  rising  of  the  moon.  Man,  it  is 
to  be  feared,  pays  but  little  attention  to  doctors  of 
divinity,  but  even  a  common  sailor,  as  the  phrase  is, 
thinks  something  of  his  poor  existence  as  he  sights 
the  Southern  Cross.  Yes,  the  worst  and  the  best 
of  us  answer  to,  and,  indeed,  eagerly  watch,  the 

[58] 


CLOUDS 

sky.  In  a  sense  we  are  all  astrologers,  all  augurs  of 
the  clouds,  and  in  a  sense  astrologers  are  right; 
for  the  stars  are  the  chart  of  the  soul. 

A  less  transcendental  observation  of  the  clouds 
may  yet  be  intrusted  with  a  record  of  visible  data 
hardly  less  mystical  than  the  foregoing  impressions. 
It  must,  for  example,  take  note  of  the  mysterious 
way  in  which  Nature  loves  to  repeat  in  the  sky  the 
patterns  he  has  delighted  to  stamp  upon  this  or  that 
creature  or  aspect  of  the  earth,  or  upon  the  moving 
curtain  of  the  sea.  Nature,  like  all  great  artists, 
loves  to  experiment  with  materials.  He  loves  to  try 
the  old  effect  in  the  new  medium.  In  summer  he 
makes  dim  ferns,  so  delicate  in  shape  that  you  can 
hardly  believe  that  they  have  roots,  except,  maybe, 
in  fairy-land ;  then  in  winter  he  tries  the  same  patterns 
on  the  window-pane. 

Nothing  in  nature,  if  it  has  happened  to  strike 
you,  or  if  you  care  to  give  it  a  serious  thought,  is 
more  mysterious  than  this  decorative  repetition — this 
duplication  and  reduplication  of  decorative  pattern, 
now  in  one  material  and  now  in  another.  When 
Nature  has  taken  a  fancy  to  a  pattern  there  is  no 
work  of  his  hands  with  which  he  will  not  impress 
it,  however  apparently  incongruous  the  impression. 
He  will  as  tenderly  dapple  the  tiger  as  the  lily  or 
the  deer,  and  crowd  upon  the  wings  of  a  butterfly 
all  the  glories  of  earth  and  heaven.     How  he  loves 

[59] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

to  emblazon  some  little  frightened  fish  as  though 
he  were  a  fine  gentleman  in  the  sun,  or  hang  a  serpent 
with  coloured  rings  as  though  he  were  the  planet 
Saturn!  How  he  lavishes  his  gold  and  his  bronze 
upon  the  beetle,  and  in  the  dead  of  night  decks  the 
under  wings  of  the  sleepy  moth  with  the  lost  purple 
of  Tyre!  And  again  how  he  delights  to  rainbow 
the  roots  of  inaccessible  hills  with  gardens  of  amaz- 
ing crystal!  But  nowhere  is  he  more  imitative  than 
in  the  sky.  There  is  not  a  colour-scheme  of  earth, 
not  a  pattern  of  flower  or  a  tint  or  rhythm  of  the  sea, 
that  he  will  not  match  for  you  in  those  misty  lawns 
and  silks  and  aery  muslins  of  his;  and  one  wonders, 
as  one  watches  his  phantasmagoria,  where  lies  the 
secret  soul  of  colour  and  form  in  the  universe,  and 
what  Nature  means  by  this  love  of  the  same  shape 
over  and  over  again,  and  one  might  say  the  same 
metre.  But  we  shall  only  know  that  when  we  can 
affirmatively  answer  those  majestic  questions  put 
by  the  Eternal  to  the  stricken  Job;  when  we  know 
where  the  light  dwelleth,  and  as  for  darkness,  where 
is  the  place  thereof;  when  we  have  entered  into  the 
treasures  of  the  snow,  and  seen  the  treasure  of  the 
hail,  and  discovered  the  hidden  ordinances  of 
heaven. 

Yes,  there  is  nothing  in  nature  more  provocative 
of  meditation  than  these  painted  phantoms  of  the 
sky,  so  transitory  that  the  Hfe  of  a  flower  is  long 
[60] 


CLOUDS 

by  comparison;  and  one  other  element  of  strangeness 
about  them  is  that  they  are  literally  phantoms,  and 
in  a  sense  subjective  appearances,  the  shape  and 
colour  of  which  are  not  merely  determined  by  the 
physical  materials  of  which  they  are  composed,  but 
by  the  distance  from  which  they  are  seen.  So  it  is 
with  some  pictures — Sargent's  portraits,  for  example. 
Seen  close,  we  have  but  an  unmeaning  motley  of 
paint.  The  distance  is  literally  a  part  of  the  enchant- 
ment. Literally,  there  is  no  picture  close  to;  and 
so  it  is  with  the  clouds.  It  is  open  to  the  moralist 
to  say  that  so  it  is  with  life  itself,  more  or  less  so 
with  all  our  experience;  for  is  not  Life  a  species 
of  Fata  IMorgana  seen  afar  off  in  youth,  a  wonder- 
land of  rainbows  to  which  we  hasten  through  the 
morning  dew?  But  when  at  length  in  middle  age 
we  come  to  occupy  these  cloud-capped  towers — 
alas!  for  the  fairy  colours  and  the  glory  forever 
passed  away.  And  yet  I  don't  know  but  that  this 
is  a  superficial  moral  to  draw  from  the  clouds; 
indeed,  I  am  more  than  a  little  sure  that  it  is,  and 
for  myself  prefer  rather  to  put  my  trust  in  those 
mystical  intimations  of  immortality  with  which,  as 
I  said  before,  they  beckon  the  soul.  Even  in  their 
very  immateriality  and  transitoriness,  their  brief 
existence  of  pure  effect,  there  is  something  that 
delights,  and  is,  so  to  speak,  cousinly  to,  the  spirit ; 
whose  own  life  is  a  vapour,  blown  before  the  breath 
[6i] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

of  God,  and  for  a  little  while  coloured  by  the  sun. 
They  are  but  appearances,  yet  so  are  we  and  the 
whole  world;  passing  embodiments  of  the  Protean 
soul  of  things,  all  alike  mysterious,  all  alike  stirring 
in  us  the  need  of  an  interpreter,  but  none  more, 
perhaps,  than  these  shapes  of  air  and  shining  dew. 


62 


CONCERNING    A    WOMAN'S 
SMILE 

ONCE  in  a  youthful  flight  of  epigram  I  wrote: 
"Beauty  is  the  smile  upon  the  face  of 
Power."  The  English  comic  paper  called 
Punch  immediately  corrected  me.  No,  it  said, 
rather  your  epigram  should  run:  "Power  is  the 
smile  upon  the  face  of  Beauty."  Yes,  indeed — 
and  what  a  fearful  power,  irresistible  and  relentless, 
it  is.  "Who  is  she,"  cries  the  poet  of  Solomon's 
Song,  "that  looketh  forth  as  the  morning,  fair  as 
the  moon,  clear  as  the  sun,  and  terrible  as  an  army 
with  banners?"  Terrible  as  an  army  with  banners! 
Yes,  the  most  formidable  battle-ship  ever  built 
is  safety  itself  compared  with  a  beautiful  woman; 
and  as  one  grows  older  and  watches  the  human 
drama  more  and  more  as  a  spectator,  taking  less 
and  less  of  a  personal  place  in  it,  one  is  more  and 
more  impressed  with  the  devastating  part  played  by 
woman's  beauty. 

Perhaps,  on  the  whole,  the  most  terrifying  thing 
a  man  can  meet  is  a  beautiful  woman.  There  should 
be  a  society  for  the  protection  of  the  unprotected 

[63] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

male  against  beautiful  women.  So  long  as  there 
is  no  beautiful  woman  in  the  story  all  goes  well. 
Men  do  their  work  strenuously,  and  dwell  peaceably 
together,  but  the  moment  the  beautiful  woman 
enters,  there  is  the  devil  to  pay.  Strong  men  become 
as  babies,  fierce  rivalries  divide  bosom  friends, 
duties  and  principles  are  forgotten — all  for  this  little 
"rainbow  strangely  painted  on  the  air,"  this  vain 
little  pinch  of  sweet  rose-coloured  dust.  Deep  in 
his  heart  man  has  always  cherished  a  bitter  resent- 
ment against  woman  for  the  strange  lunar  control 
she  has  over  him.  When  he  looks  at  her,  a  mere 
flower,  it  seems  quite  absurd  that  so  fragile  and 
fleeting  a  thing  should  have  such  a  power  for  good 
or  ill  upon  this  mass  of  bone  and  muscle,  thew  and 
sinew,  upon  this  tower  of  purpose  and  creative 
energy. 

If  there  is  a  way  to  escape  this  witchcraft  of 
woman,  be  sure  that  man  would  find  it.  To  be 
beaten  by  this  moonbeam,  this  frail  flutter  of  butter- 
fly-wings, this  mere  strain  of  music!  It  is  too 
preposterous — and  how  often  has  man,  through  the 
ages,  girded  himself  and  put  on  his  whole  armour 
of  masculine  complacency,  and  gone  forth  to  defy 
this  moonbeam.  So  strong,  so  determined  to  assert 
his  supremacy  and  independence, — O  so  beautiful 
a  front  of  impregnability! — to  be  shattered  utterly, 
even  comically  abased,  by  a  woman's  smile.  You 
[64] 


CONCERNING  A  WOMAN'S   SMILE 

come  up  to  her,  so  to  say,  armed  to  the  teeth,  with 
the  most  important  clatter  of  hostile  accoutrements. 
She  looks  up  at  you,  and  smiles — and  it  is  all  over. 
You  are  as  vanquished  as  if  a  lyddite  shell  had 
suddenly  interrupted  your  conversation.  And  this 
terrific  artillery  is  the  secret  of  a  mere  Dutch  doll, 
a  curious  idol  made  out  of  lace  and  face-pow^der. 
Almost  any  fairly  pretty  woman  has  this  power,  and 
if  so,  think  what  dynamite  there  must  have  been  in 
the  smile  of  Helen  of  Troy,  or  of  Cleopatra. 

"Is  this  the  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships, 
And  burned  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium?" 

cries  Marlowe's  Faustus,  as  he  sees  Helen  in  a 
vision.  Yes!  a  woman's  face  moved  all  that  might 
of  men-at-arms,  and  set  all  those  muscles  straining 
at  the  oar.  It  seems  incredibly  unreasonable,  but 
so  it  was,  and  so  it  is,  and  so — please  God — it  will 
ever  be — so  long  as  the  fairy  wand  of  the  moon 
controls  with  a  mere  touch  of  silver  the  monstrous 
tonnage  of  the  sea,  so  long  as  dreams  are  the  shapers 
and  builders  of  reality,  and  the  visible  merely  a 
crude  copy  of  the  invisible.  For  a  woman's  smile 
holds  such  sway  over  us  because  it  is  really  super- 
natural in  its  power.  The  influence  of  all  beauty 
is  supernatural,  and  the  significance  of  woman,  and 
the  secret  of  her  dominion  over  us,  are  that  she  is 
not   really   a   human,    but   a  supernatural,   being. 

5  [65] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

She  is  in  mysterious  traffic  with  that  invisible 
world  from  which  the  visible  world  proceeds. 
She  is  a  vessel  of  its  secrets,  and  intuitively  obeys 
and  enforces  its  laws.  There  is  no  accounting  for 
her  except — miracle;  and  the  power  of  her  smile 
is  one  of  the  mysteries  of  the  universe.  Two  red 
lips,  and  two  brown  eyes — that  is  all  she  has  to  do 
it  with,  yet  what  infinite  variety  she  contrives  to 
achieve  with  these  simple  materials.  A  man  with 
sufficient  opportunities  of  study — and  nothing  better 
to  do — might  well  write  a  whole  big  book  on  the 
subject  of  a  woman's  smile,  or  rather  woman's 
smiles — all  the  innumerable  varieties  and  all  the 
mobile  meanings.  I  have  had  no  such  opportunities, 
and,  besides,  I  have  other  mermaids  to  fry.  But 
ev3n  a  busy  man  cannot  have  failed  to  note,  to 
come  in  contact  with,  so  to  say,  certain  typical 
smiles — for  good  or  ill.  Perhaps  the  smile  most 
frequently  seen  on  the  face  of  woman  is  what  one 
might  call  the  Circe  smile — the  smile  of  the  conscious 
enchantress,  securely  aware  of  her  power.  There 
is  in  it  sometimes  just  a  hint  of  humorous  pity. 
The  victim,  man,  is  so  simple,  and — if  I  may  be 
permitted  the  word — so  "easy."  The  lazy  enchant- 
ress— all  enchantresses  are  lazy — looks  at  him  with 
a  kind  of  pitying  wonder:  Is  it  possible  that  this 
big  strong  thing  can  be  quite  such  a  fool  as  to  be 
taken  in  by  so  old  a  trick  of  the  eyes  and  mouth? 
1661 


CONCERNING  A   WOMAN'S   SMILE 

Can  this  really  be  Hercules,  so  supine,  so  humbly 
attendant  on  the  distaff  of  Omphale?  Really,  a 
power  so  easily  wielded  seems  hardly  worth  wielding ! 
However  .  .  .  and  the  woman  smiles  her  Circe 
smile,  and  the  poor  grovelling  maniac,  once  a  man, 
immediately  forgets  home  and  country,  forgets  every 
promise  and  vow  he  ever  made,  and  the  strong  work 
of  his  hands,  forgets  everything — if  only  Circe  will 
smile  again.  This  Circe  smile  represents  woman's 
arrogant  knowledge  of  her  power  over  the  senses 
and  the  idealism  of  man.  She  uses  it  with  a  care- 
lessness, and  too  often  with  a  cynicism,  which  no 
doubt  she  would  excuse  by  a  reference  to  her  general 
disadvantage  in  her  eternal  duel  with  her  big  tyrant 
— man.  Poor  little  thing — she  is  so  tiny  and  frail, 
and  man  is  so  big  and  strong!  She  has  so  few 
weapons  wherewith  to  fight  this — ^imaginary — giant. 
What  has  she,  after  all,  but  her  smile?  Surely 
you  will  not  deny  her  the  use  of  that! 

All  the  same,  this  smile  emanates  from  the  instinc- 
tive wickedness  of  woman,  rather  than  from  her 
goodness.  It  is  the  smile  that  links  woman  with 
the  Powers  of  Darkness,  with  the  beautiful  evil 
influences  of  nature — so  beautiful,  but  O  so  evil! 
So  evil, — but  O  so  beautiful!  It  seems  almost 
unfair  for  woman  to  use  it,  almost  as  if  she  defeated 
us  with  some  fragrant  narcotic,  or  stole  our  reason 
from  us  with  a  drug  from  the  laboratories  of  Aphro- 
(67] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

dite.  Yes!  it  is  a  cruel  smile,  the  smile  of  Circe. 
I  suppose  that  she  has  never  forgiven  Ulysses, 
and  all  men  ever  since  have  had  to  suffer  for  that 
incorrigible  wanderer. 

There  is  another  cruel  smile  one  often  sees  now- 
adays on  the  face  of  woman — a  smile  at  once  as 
powerful  as  an  automobile,  and — as  vulgar:  the 
brutal  smile  of  money.  The  men  who  make  money, 
the  marvellous  millionaires,  usually  give  little  ex- 
ternal evidence  of  their  financial  omnipotence.  If 
you  want  to  see  their  money,  you  must  look  at  the 
faces  of  their  wives  and  daughters.  Watch  how  they 
smile.  Their  fortunes  are  indeed  their  faces.  The 
men  who  make  money,  obviously,  know  its  power, 
but  they  use  that  power  with  comparative  mercy; 
but  the  women  for  whose  luxury  they  have  made 
it  have  no  such  modesty.  Their  eyes  are  like  poHce- 
men's  clubs  made  of  gold  and  inlaid  with  diamonds. 
With  that  brutal  practicality  which  is  one  of  the 
many  paradoxes  of  the  fairy  called  woman,  they 
have  reahsed  the  brute-force  of  money,  and  with 
woman's  immemorial  instinct  to  use  any  weapon 
to  hand,  they  use  it  without  mercy. 

When  a  man  knows  he  can  buy  you  body  and 
soul,  he  is  usually  decent  about  it,  but  a  woman 
.  .  .  well!  she  stands  haughtily  on  a  race-track  in 
the  sun  and  looks  like  her — bank-account. 

There  is  another   smile   which   belongs  to  the 
[68] 


CONCERNING  A  WOMAN'S   SMILE 

wickedness  of  woman, — the  Smile  of  Caste — the 
smile  that  tells  everyone  to  what  an  old  family  you 
belong,  and  how  immensely  superior  you  are  to 
your  surroundings — though  you  should  never  raise 
a  finger. 

That  haughty  and  superior  smile  of  caste,  that, 
after  all,  seldom  goes  back  very  far — how  silly, 
and  how  attractive  it  is !  You  often  see  it  in  England 
and — ^Newport. 

But  all  the  smiles  on  the  faces  of  women  are  not 
evil  smiles,  not  smiles  of  seduction,  or  of  cruelty, 
or  of  arrogance.  Good  women  smile  too — and 
when  they  smile  it  is  as  though  the  heaven  opened. 
It  is  only  when  a  good  woman  smiles  that  one  knows 
what  a  smile  is.  Have  you  seen  mothers  smile 
over  their  cradles,  or  nurses  smile  over  some  poor 
broken  man  in  a  hospital,  or  have  you  seen  the  smile 
on  the  face  of  some  sister  of  mercy,  lighting  up,  as 
with  a  holy  candle,  the  darkness  of  a  dreary  city 
slum? 

Have  you  seen  a  mother  giving  suck  to  her  child  ? 
or  seen  a  wife  smile  up  into  the  face  of  her  husband  ? 
Have  you  seen  her  smile  down  on  him  when  he  has 
fallen  asleep  from  weariness,  and  has  thus  become 
to  her — as  all  men  are  to  all  women — Just  another 
child  to  take  care  of? 

These  are  the  smiles  for  which — you  can  get  no 
pictures.     And  no  words. 

[69] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

Mothers  and  nurses  don't  sit,  or  stand,  for  their 
photographs. 

They  smile  in  private.  They  don't  expose  their 
smile  at  race-tracks,  or  smile  at  a  camera  in  the  act 
of  controlling  an  unmanageable  automobile,  or 
when  they  are  showing  how  well  they  can  drive  two 
horses — instead  of  the  customary  one.  They  smile 
without  a  press-agent,  or  a  photographer. 

They  smile  because  they  are  good  women,  helping 
the  helpless,  and  the  smile  on  their  faces  is  truly 
the  joy  of  their  unconscious  goodness. 

To  a  true  woman  the  whole  world  is  her  child, 
and  she  is  its  mother;  and  whether  it  takes  the  form 
of  baby  or  husband,  saint  or  sinner,  or  soldier  limp- 
ing from  the  wars,  she  is  always  there  with  the  smile 
that  is  the  most  attractive  of  all  smiles — the  smile 
of  a  good  woman. 


70] 


VI 

CITIZENS   OF    NATURE 

THE  city  man  delights  to  mock  the  country- 
man's simpUcity  in  town,  his  "hayseed" 
ignorance  of  the  bewildering  mechanism 
of  city  life;  but,  when  the  city  man  goes  up  state 
the  countryman  has  his  revenge.  When  in  town, 
maybe,  the  countryman  had  stood  in  astonishment 
before  a  "ticker,"  and  the  city  man,  to  whom 
it  was  a  somewhat  familiar  object,  had  smiled  a 
superior  smile.  Never  to  have  seen  a  "  ticker," — 
think  of  that!  But  surely  the  countryman  has  the 
best  of  the  laugh  when  the  city  man  walks  gingerly 
about  his  farmyard,  with  his  eye  on  his  city  boots, 
and  is  filled  with  wonder  at  the  laying  of  an  egg. 
Never  saw  a  hen  lay  an  egg!  Well, — .  .  .  .  And 
here's  a  fellow,  too,  who  has  to  be  told  from  what 
quarter  the  wind  is  blowing,  who  sees  a  cow  milked 
for  the  first  time,  and  asks,  "What  is  that?"  every 
few  minutes.  When  you  think  of  it,  it  is  rather 
amazing  how  ignorant  we  who  live  in  cities  are  of 
the  forces  and  processes  back  of  us, — back  even  of 
our  breakfast,  or  our  quick  lunch.  Our  city  mechan- 
ism would  wither  like  an  unwatered  flower,  without 

[71] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

the  new  milk,  the  fresh  eggs,  the  fish  out  of  the  sea, 
the  ducks  in  reedy  ponds,  the  frogs  that  sing  in 
the  marshes  sweetly  as  any  birds,  the  bees  in  a 
milhon  hives,  and  the  cattle  in  a  thousand  stockyards. 
You  who  love  scallops  in  the  evening,  you  whose 
passion  is  for  mushrooms  on  toast,  and  you  who 
hardly  give  anyone  else  a  chance  with  the  olives, — 
have  you  ever  seen  pictures,  as  you  sit  in  your  gas- 
tronomic dreams,  of  the  romantic  natural  processes 
that  work  each  day,  unseen  and  afar,  to  bring  about 
all  this  music  of  digestion?  Have  you  gone  out 
with  the  catboats  in  a  stiff  breeze,  and  hauled  your 
dredge,  and  sorted  out  your  treasure  from  the 
uncanny  debris  of  the  sea?  Have  you  stolen  about 
the  meadows  in  the  half-light  of  morning  and 
filled  your  basket  with  the  earth-fragrant  dots  of 
dewy  whiteness?  Have  you  climbed  the  terraces 
of  little  crooked,  sunburnt  trees,  with  long  floors 
of  shining  flowers  making  the  staircase?  Probably 
not, — and  yet,  if  you  had,  how  much  more  your 
scallops,  your  mushrooms,  and  your  olives  would 
mean  to  you!  In  fact,  instead  of  being  merely 
so  many  delicacies,  these  common  objects  of  a 
dinner  table  would  be  like  words  in  an  index  instantly 
referring  you  to  the  book  of  nature.  To  know 
how  things  have  come  about  is  by  no  means  a  neces- 
sity. Sometimes,  indeed,  it  is  as  well  for  our  enjoy- 
ment that  we  are  ignorant  of  processes,  and  rest 
[72] 


CITIZENS   OF  NATURE 


content  with  the  product:  pate  de  foie  gras,  for 
example,  or  the  hats  or  beautiful  women.  But  I 
am  not  thinking  of  the  cruel  methods  of  man,  but 
of  the  innocent  processes  of  nature.  I  am  thinking 
of  how  the  wheat  grows  and  is  reaped  and  ground, 
and  is  finally  Vienna  rolls;  of  how  the  grape  tendrils 
its  way  up  tall  poles  and  blossoms  and  hangs  in 
purple  clusters,  and  finally  writes  its  name  on  a 
wine  list;  I  am  thinking  of  quiet  places  where  crops 
are  growing  and  apples  are  ripening,  of  pastures 
where  herds  are  feeding,  of  sunny  silences  where  the 
bees  hum  and  the  doves  coo  and  the  hen  proudly 
cackles  her  great  news;  of  all  the  golden  sap  of 
silence  that  wells  beneath  the  noisy  surface  of  the 
world. 

And  when  I  said  that  the  countryman  had  the 
best  of  the  laugh,  I  meant  that,  of  the  two  learnings, 
his  was  that  most  worth  having.  Who  cares  whether 
or  not  he  knows  his  way  about  town?  He  knows 
something  far  better.  He  knows  his  way  about  the 
fields  and  woods;  he  knows  the  names  of  trees  and 
the  haunts  of  birds  and  the  secret  places  of  the 
flowers.  He  is  learned  in  the  winds  and  the  rains 
and  the  changes  of  the  moon,  and  he  is  a  "close- 
bosom  friend  of  the  maturing  sun."  He  stands  near 
the  springs  of  the  river  of  life.  We  townsfolk  are 
down  among  the  wharves  and  the  shipping.  Yet 
we,  too,  in  a  pathetic,  exiled  fashion,  arc  children 

[73] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 


of  nature.  Our  spirits  rise  and  fall  with  the  barom- 
eter. We  make  the  weather  as  much  our  concern 
as  if  we  had  growing  crops  to  think  of,  and  as, 
speeding  to  our  offices  on  the  street  cars  of  an  April 
morning,  we  catch  glimpses  of  the  neighboring 
country  at  the  shimmering  ends  of  streets,  our  hearts 
rejoice  to  see  that  the  foliage  is  turning  green  again, — 
as  if  it  really  concerned  us  poor  prisoners  of  brick- 
and-mortar.  Yes!  the  deep  significance  of  our 
morning  inquiries  as  to  the  weather  probably  strikes 
us  but  seldom.  You  would  say  that  it  matters  little 
to  men  and  women  whose  lives,  from  eight  in  the 
morning  till  six  in  the  afternoon,  are  spent  in  twenty- 
story  buildings,  whether  the  sun  shines  or  not,  or 
whether  it  rains,  snows,  or  hails.  Under  cover 
all  the  day,  one  might  almost  say  all  their  lives, 
what,  to  them,  are  the  vagaries  of  the  elements? 
Yet  so  close  is  the  bond  that  binds  even  her 
most  estranged  children  to  the  Great  Mother 
that  even  a  chief  accountant,  though  you  buried  him 
deep  within  the  steel  and  concrete  walls  of  burglar- 
proof  safes,  or  sunk  him  nightly  under  water,  guarded 
by  clock-work  combination  locks  that  would  defy 
their  inventors  to  crack  them, — even  he,  at  certain 
times  of  the  year,  would  hear  the  earth,  his  mother, 
calling  him,  and  feel  an  ache  in  his  heart  for  the 
green  woods  or  the  salt  sea.  I  think  no  city  man 
ever  takes  his  poor  little  yearly  holiday  without 
I  74] 


CITIZENS   OF  NATURE 


realising  sadly  how  artificially  the  majority  of  his 
days  are  spent,  and  where  his  heart  really  lies. 
Almost  pathetic  is  his  happiness  as  he  walks  about 
a  farm  and  watches,  with  a  child's  eagerness,  all 
the  ancient,  ever-new  processes  of  the  earth,  or  baits 
his  hook  for  flat-fish  in  exciting  summer  seas,  or 
climbs  the  lonely  hills  and  stands  in  astonishment 
that  there  is  so  much  cleansing  solitude  in  the  world. 
Ah!  here  is  the  work  he  would  fain  be  doing.  Here 
is  his  real  home. 

One  of  the  healtliiest  signs  of  the  times  is  the 
way  in  which  the  younger  generation,  and  some  of 
the  older,  are  turning  their  thoughts  to  the  country 
life.  The  ideal  of  cities,  the  money  ideal,  is  on  the 
wane.  Young  men  evcr^'where  are  asking  them- 
selves, "Is  it  worth  while,  when,  with  less  money, 
we  can  be  just  as  happy,  nay!  far  happier,  and  do 
the  work  and  live  the  Hfe  we  really  love?  "  We 
are  all  in  revolt,  literary  men  amongst  the  rest, — • 
in  revolt  against  brick  and  mortar  and  pen  and  ink. 
Says  Marcus  Aurclius,  in  one  of  his  meditations: 
"In  the  morning  when  thou  risest  unwillingly,  let 
this  thought  be  present:  '  I  am  rising  to  the  work 
of  a  human  being.'"  But  it  is  to  be  feared  that 
this  counsel  has  lost  its  force  for  most  modern  men 
and  women;  for  how  many  of  us  can  say,  at  rising, 
"  I  am  rising  to  the  work  of  a  human  being  "  ?  On 
the  contrary,  if  we  are  honest  and  not  cowards,  we 

[75] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

are  compelled  to  say  that  we  are  rising  too  often 
to  work  entirely  inhuman  and  unnatural,  work 
artificial,  wearisome,  and  unprofitable;  work  in 
which  we  take  no  pleasure,  unless,  indeed,  we  have 
become  denaturalised  by  habit,  and  work  which 
we  do  merely  because  we  must,  or  think  we  must, 
if  we  are  to  go  on  living  at  all. 

Of  course,  we  cannot  all  be  farmers  or  fishermen, 
nor  is  rose-growing  all  roses.  Even  in  the  most 
simplified  community,  there  must  be  some  merchant- 
men to  handle  our  produce,  and  bookkeepers  to 
register  our  transactions  and  figure  up  our  accounts. 
Still,  there  are  many  signs  that  mankind  is  deter- 
mined in  the  near  future  so  to  simplify  the  conditions 
and  the  processes  of  living  as  to  reduce  the  dreary 
and  disagreeable  work  of  the  world  to  a  minimum. 
As  machinery  grows  more  and  more  human,  men 
will  be  less  called  upon  to  be  machines.  This 
good  time,  which  is  surely,  if  slowly,  coming,  will 
come  all  the  sooner  the  more  individual  men  and 
women  feel  the  call  of  the  more  simple,  natural  life, 
and  realise  that,  the  further  away  from  nature  we 
live,  the  more  life  costs,  and  the  less  satisfaction 
it  brings.  The  reason  we  are  happy  working  in  a 
garden,  and  less  happy  working  at  a  desk,  is  that 
one  occupation  is  nearer  to  nature  than  another. 
Do  you  remember  that  charming  story  in  Stevenson's 
"Inland  Voyage," — how,  landing  one  evening  from 
[76] 


CITIZENS   OF  NATURE 


his  canoe,  he  found  himself  at  a  boat  club  on  the 
riverside,  and  listened  to  the  enthusiastic  boat- 
talk  of  the  young  Frenchmen  just  escaped  from  their 
offices  and  warehouses?  In  the  daytime,  they 
told  him,  they  worked  at  trivial  occupations,  were 
lawyers,  doctors,  clerks,  or  what  not,  but  in  the 
evening,  when  they  came  down  to  the  riverside  and 
took  to  their  boats,  "Then,"  said  they,  "nous 
sommes  serieux":  then  the  serious  work  of  the  day 
began.  And,  quite  seriously  speaking,  there  is  a 
very  real  sense  in  wliich  a  man's  holidays  are  the 
most  important  time  of  his  year, — for  in  them  only 
is  he  brought  in  touch  with  the  vital  elements  of 
his  nature,  spiritual  as  well  as  physical.  Detached 
the  year  round,  absorbed  in  some  more  or  less 
mechanical  occupation,  he  runs  the  risk  of  forgetting 
his  own  nature,  and  of  acquiescing  in  his  own  ban- 
ishment from  the  larger,  cosmic  world  to  which 
he  belongs  as  much  as  any  bird  in  the  air  or  fish  in  the 
sea.  In  his  holidays  he  comes  back  for  a  while  to 
that  power-house  of  being,  the  very  existence  of 
which  he  had  almost  forgotten  in  the  city,  lost, 
indeed,  as  one  who  snaps  on  and  off  his  electric 
light,  without  giving  a  thought  to  the  mysterious 
force  that  feeds  it:  so  the  city  man  draws  his  breath, 
eats  his  food,  and  generally  lives  his  life,  in 
isolated  ignorance  of  what  he  is  and  whence  he  came. 
It  is  only  when  he  has  left  the  city  behind  and 

[77] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

united  himself  once  more  with  that  world  of  nature 
from  which,  for  so  much  of  each  year,  he  is  an  exile, 
that  he  really  comes  to  himself  and  a  realisation  of 
his  proper  significance  in  a  universe  so  vast  that  the 
roar  of  the  greatest  city  is  lost  like  the  murmur  of 
a  fly  in  its  dread  profundity.  In  town,  maybe,  he 
would  boast  himself  a  citizen  of  no  mean  city,  an 
important  unit  in  its  earnest,  ambitious  life,  but 
here,  under  the  solemn  stars,  or  amid  "the  sacred 
spaces  of  the  sea,"  it  is  not  only  his  own  littleness  that 
is  borne  in  upon  him,  but  a  new  greatness,  a  greatness 
he  had  all  but  forgotten, — a  spiritual  importance. 
Though  here  he  is  a  unit  so  infinitesimally  small, 
the  scheme  of  which  he  rediscovers  himself  a  part 
is  so  mysteriously  magnificent  that  it  dignifies  its 
humblest  unit,  and  even  a  blade  of  grass  is  a  modest 
kinsman  to  the  stars.  In  the  great  growing  silences 
of  nature,  in  the  punctual  rhythms  of  her  times  and 
seasons,  in  her  giant  energies,  in  her  vast  peace, 
in  her  immortal  beauty, — O  weary  child  of  cities! 
there  is  for  us  for  ever  healing  and  a  home. 

The  Great  Mother,  I  said,  a  few  sentences  back, 
and  the  expression  is  so  much  a  common- 
place of  poetical  symbolism  that  we  are  apt  to  use 
it  with  hardly  a  thought  of  the  reality  behind  it. 
Yet  nature  is  actually  the  Great  Mother,  not  merely 
in  poetry,  but  just  day  by  day,  in  the  experience  of 
us  all;  and  the  test  of  her  motherhood  is  that  in 
I  78] 


CITIZENS   OF  NATURE 


times  of  happiness,  times  when  the  world  goes 
well  with  us,  we  forget  that  we  have  such  a  mother: 
it  is  only  when  we  are  humiliated  by  sorrow  or  sin 
that,  instinctively,  we  cry  out  to  her,  run  to  her, 
remembering  that  we  have  one  friend  who  under- 
stands, and,  if  need  be,  will  forgive  it  all.  However 
complex  our  nature,  however  difficult  the  conditions 
of  trial  in  which  we  find  ourselves,  there  is  no  human 
friend  that  understands  it  all,  no  one  that  we  dare 
venture  to  seek,  no  one  whose  voice  we  dare  invoke 
with  the  same  certainty  of  comprehension  and 
consolation  as  that  which  sends  us  to  the  sea,  or 
takes  us  to  the  hills. 

"I  have  no  friend  so  generous  as  this  sun 
That  comes  to  meet  me  with  his  big,  warm  hands." 

If  I  need  a  confidant  for  my  tears,  it  is  no  human 
friend  I  seek.  I  blend  them  with  the  rain.  And 
more  tranquillising  than  the  hand  of  any  human 
friend  is  the  starlit  hand  of  the  silent  night  on  the 
fevered  pulses  of  the  heart.  How  human  and 
universal  was  the  instinct  of  the  heartbroken  lover 
in  Swinburne's  "Triumph  of  Time,"  when  he  cried 
out, — 

"I  will  go  back  to  the  great,  sweet  mother, 
Mother  and  lover  of  men,  the  sea  .  .  .   " 

Why  is  it  that  the  first  instinct  of  the  nerve-tired 
[79] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

child  of  the  town — instinctive  it  would  seem  as  the 
yearning  of  the  swallow  for  the  south, — is  to  throw 
himself  into  the  arms  of  the  sea,  or  to  lay  his  aching 
and  haunted  head  on  some  green  shoulder  of  the 
hills?  The  reason  is  that  Nature  is  indeed  his 
mother,  and  that,  though  in  moments  of  his  con- 
fidence and  his  pride  he  may  have  forgotten  his 
relationship,  he,  however  old,  however  sophisticated, 
however  important,  even  financially,  he  may  be, 
is  still  her  little,  dependent  child. 


So] 


VII 

THE   HUMAN   NEED  OF   CONEY 
ISLAND 

TO  call  Coney  Island  one  of  the  wonders  of 
the  world  is  not  for  me.  I  think  it  has 
been  already  said.  One  of  the  wonders 
of  the  world!  One!  Why,  surely,  Coney  is  all 
the  wonders  of  the  world  in  one  pyrotechnic  master- 
piece of  coruscating  concentration.  I  write — or 
try  to  write — in  this  style  on  purpose — for  am  I 
not  writing  of  Coney  Island? — and  it  was  not  till 
I  went  down  to  Coney  Island,  on  a  brief  duck- 
shooting  expedition,  that  I  realised  why  the  word 
"pyrotechnic"  had  been  invented.  I  had  often 
fondled  the  word  in  dictionaries,  or  on  those  circus- 
posters  which,  to  my  mind,  are  the  masterpieces  of  a 
certain  kind  of  Hterary  style,  but  I  had  never  hoped 
to  meet  with  anything  equal  to  the  word.  One 
so  seldom  meets  with  anything  equal  to  a  word. 
A  word  like  "pyrotechnic"  is  Hke  the  name  of  some 
beautiful  woman  whom  we  never  expect  to  meet 
except  in  dreams.  But  at  last  I  have  met  my 
beautiful  lady-love  Pyrotechnic — in  Coney  Island. 
Her  sister,  too — whose  name  is  "Coruscating." 
6  [8i] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

Arm  in  arm  with  Pyrotechnic  and  Coruscating, 
you  and  I,  if  you  have  a  mind,  may  see  all  the 
wonders  of  the  world  in  this  million-faceted  false 
diamond  known  as  Coney  Island. 

All  the  wonders,  I  say,  and  I  use  the  plural  advis- 
edly; for,  have  you  noticed  how  men  and  women 
flock  to  wonders — but  how  little  they  know,  or  care, 
of  Wonder?  That,  of  all  things,  most  struck  me 
in  Coney  Island — man's  voracity  for  wonders,  and 
his  ignorance  of  Wonder. 

Mankind  will  not  give  a  second  look  at  the  rising 
moon,  but  present  it  with  some  disagreeable  mon- 
strosity, something  that  nature  ought  never  to  have 
allowed,  something  also  essentially  uninteresting, 
such  as,  say,  the  Human  Pin-Cushion,  the  Balloon- 
Headed  Baby,  or  the  Six-Tailed  Bull-Terrier,  and 
there  is  no  limit  to  its  gaping  astonishment. 
Forlorn  horrors  of  abortion,  animals  tortured  into 
talent,  or  feats  of  fantastic  daring,  these  win  the 
respect  and  thrill  the  exorbitant  imagination  of  man. 
Nothing  pleases  him  better  than  to  see  some  skilled 
human  being,  with  ghastly  courage,  risking  a  hor- 
rible death  for  the  sake  of  his  entertainment. 
Death,  or  at  least  the  fear  of  it,  as  always,  still 
holds  a  foremost  place  in  popular  amusements; 
though  we  are,  I  suppose,  a  little  less  cruel  than 
they  were  in  ancient  Rome. 

But  I  must  not  write  as  though  I  felt  superior  to 
[82] 


NEED   OF   CONEY   ISLAND 


Coney  Island,  Indeed  not.  The  human  appetite 
for  fairs  has  been  implanted  in  my  bosom  also,  and 
Coney,  of  course,  is  just  the  village  fair  in  excelsis, 
catering  to  the  undying  demand  for  green  spectacles 
and  gilded  gingerbread  and  quaint  absurdities  of 
amusement  ;  generally  speaking,  man's  desperate 
need  of  entertainment,  and  his  pathetic  incapac- 
ity for  entertaining  himself.  Really,  it  is  strange, 
when  you  think  of  it,  that  in  a  world  with  so  many 
interesting  things  to  do,  so  many,  so  to  say,  ready- 
made  fascinations  and  marvels — that  man  should 
find  it  necessary  to  loop-the-loop  for  distraction,  or 
ride  wooden  horses  to  the  sound  of  savage  music, 
or  ascend  a  circle  in  the  air  in  lighted  carriages  slung 
on  a  revolving  wheel,  or  hurl  himself  with  splashing 
laughter  down  chutes  into  the  sea.  When  one 
might  be  reading  Plato — ever  so  much  more  amus- 
ing. 

And  yet  so  man  has  been  made,  and  there  come 
moments  when  it  is  necessary  for  him  to  shy  sticks  at 
a  mark,  in  the  hope  of  winning  a  cigar  or  a  cocoanut, 
or  divert  himself  with  the  antics  of  cynical  mounte- 
banks, or  look  at  animals  in  cages,  menagerie  marvels 
which  arc  interesting  chiefly  from  being  caged,  or 
gaze  upon  g\'mnasts  and  athletes  performing  feats 
of  skill  and  strength  which  would  be  really  astonish- 
ing if  they  were  not  the  tricks  of  so  old  a  trade, 
professional  astonishments  handed  down,  like  the 

[83] 


ATTITUDES  AND  AVOWALS 

craft  of  shoemaking,  from  immemorial  time.  There 
is  nothing  especially  marvellous  about  snake-charm- 
ing. It  is  a  business,  like  any  other;  and  to  swallow 
knives,  or  "  eat-' em-alive,"  for  a  living  is,  no  doubt, 
hard  work,  yet  what  modes  of  working  for  a  living 
are  not?  Sword-swallowing  is  scarcely  so  arduous 
as  bricklaying,  and,  though  one  is  as  essentially 
interesting  as  the  other,  the  humble  bricklayer  draws 
but  small  audiences  for  his  exhibitions  of  skill. 

But,  as  I  said,  man  has  been  made  with  an  appetite 
for  eccentricities  of  diversion  rather  than  the  love 
of  more  normal  pleasures.  Personally,  I  am  the 
last  to  blame  him,  and  he  who  can  look  upon  a 
merry-go-round  without  longing  to  ride  the  wooden 
horse  once  more  before  he  dies,  for  all  the  maturity 
of  his  middle  age,  can  hardly  be  a  human  being. 

I  said  that  I  went  down  to  Coney  on  a  duck- 
shooting  expedition.  I  should,  of  course,  have 
explained  that  it  was  a  tin-duck-shooting  expedi- 
tion, and,  even  when  I  say  that,  you  will  hardly 
understand  if  you  have  not  fallen  under  the  strange 
spell  of  that  perpetual  progression  of  tin  ducks 
which  invites  the  tin  sportsman  hard  by  the  Dream- 
land gates  of  Coney  Island,  If  you  haven't  shot 
at  those  tin  ducks,  or  if  you  disdain  to  shoot  at  them, 
you  may  as  well  not  visit  Coney  Island.  The 
Congressional  Library  you  might  find  congenial, 
or  you  might  go  on  a  pious  pilgrimage  to  Grant's 

[84] 


NEED   OF   CONEY  ISLAND 

Tomb,  but  I  fear  you  will  never  understand  Coney 
Island.  Besides,  Coney  Island  might  misunder- 
stand you,  and  to  be  misunderstood  in  Coney  Island 
is  no  laughing  matter — for  to  misunderstand  you  is 
one  of  the  many  serious  interests  of  that  "happy 
isle  set  in  the  silver  sea." 

Tin  ducks  remind  me  of  tin-types.  If  you  are 
not  a  friend  of  the  Gipsy  photographer,  the  Daguerre 
of  the  highways  and  byways,  in  the  little  tents 
pitched  by  the  roadside,  the  only  photographer  that 
never  calls  himself  an  artist,  but,  nine  times  out  of 
ten,  gives  you  the  best  picture  you  ever  had — again, 
don't  go  to  Coney  Island.  My  friend  Pyrotechnic 
and  I,  being  simple  souls,  bathing  in  all  the  pristine 
hallucinations  of  the  place,  sat  together  hand  in 
hand  with  a  heavenly  expression  under  a  very  real 
electric  light,  and,  a  moment  after,  saw  our  faces 
fried  over  a  little  stove,  another  moment  we  were  in 
gilt  frames,  another  moment  we  were  out  again  on 
the  Broadway,  with  our  eyes  on  Dreamland — but 
just  as  we  were  about  to  enter,  a  stout  old  crone  of 
the  American-Italian  species  beckoned  us  into  her 
enchanted  cave,  and  proposed  to  tell  our  fortunes. 

Again,  if  you  are  too  superior  to  have  your  fortune 
told  by  some  peasant  woman  who  knows  nothing 
about  it,  and  knows  that  you  know  that  she  doesn't — 
don't  go  to  Coney  Island. 

The  great  charm  of  Coney  is  just  there.     It  not 

[8S] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

only  knows  itself  a  fake,  but,  so  to  speak,  it  makes 
so  little  bones  about  the  matter.  It  knows  that  you 
know,  and  it  expects  you  to  pretend  to  be  taken  in, 
as  it  pretends  to  think  that  it  is  taking  you  in.  And 
yet,  one  cannot  be  too  sure;  I  wonder  if,  perhaps, 
Coney  Island,  like  all  similar  institutions  in  all  times 
and  in  all  lands,  does  not  regard  the  public  as  a 
big  baby  in  need  of  a  noisy,  electric-lighted  rattle. 

Or,  on  the  other  hand,  do  the  magicians  of 
"Dreamland"  and  "Luna  Park"  persuade  them- 
selves that  their  domes  and  minarets  of  fairy  fire 
are  really  anything  more  than,  so  to  speak,  share- 
holders lit  by  electric  light,  the  capitalistic  torches 
of  modern  Neroism?  Do  they  really  think  that 
"Dreamland"  is  dreamland,  or  that  any  one  but  a 
lunatic  would  look  for  the  moon  in  "Luna  Park"? 

Yet,  after  all,  whatever  the  mind  and  meaning 
of  this  strange  congregation  of  showmen  may  be, 
whether  they  merely  cater  in  cynical  fashion  to  the 
paying  needs  of  a  contemptible  uncomprehended 
multitude,  or  whether  they  gratify  their  own  pyro- 
technic and  coruscating  tastes,  this  much  is  true: 
that  Coney  Island,  more  than  any  other  showman 
in  the  world,  has  heard  and  answered  man's  cry 
for  the  Furies  of  Light  and  Noise.  Whatever  else 
the  speculators  back  of  Coney  Island  don't  know, 
they  understand  the — Zulu.  Coney  Island  is  the 
Tom-Tom  of  America.  Every  nation  has,  and 
1861 


NEED   OF   CONEY  ISLAND 


needs — and  loves — its  Tom-Tom.  It  has  its  needs 
of  orgiastic  escape  from  respectability — that  is, 
from  the  world  of  What-we-have-to-do  into  the 
world  of  What-we-would-like-to-do,  from  the  world 
of  duty  that  endureth  for  ever  into  the  world  of  joy 
that  is  graciously  permitted  for  a  moment.  Some 
escape  by  one  way,  and  some  by  another — some  by 
the  ivory  gate,  and  some  by  the  gate  of  horn — or 
gold.     The  thing  is  to  escape. 

It  is  of  no  use  to  criticise  humanity.  Like  all 
creations,  it — survives  its  critics.  The  only  inter- 
esting thing  is  to  try  to  understand  it,  or,  at  least, 
appreciate.  Perhaps  Coney  Island  is  the  most 
human  thing  that  God  ever  made,  or  permitted 
the  devil  to  make. 

Of  course,  the  real  reason  of  its  existence  in  our 
day  has  nothing  to  do  with  its  modern  appliances, 
electric  and  otherwise.  The  real  reason  is  that  it 
is  as  old  as  the  hills.  Nothing  younger  than  the 
hills  is  alive  to-day.  The  flowers  look  younger — 
on  account  of  their  complexions — but  perhaps  they 
arc  even  older  than  the  hills.  Coney  Island  is  so 
alive  with  light  and  noise  every  night  because  it  is 
so  old-established  an  institution.  Man  needs  Coney 
Island  to-day,  because  he  has  always  needed  Coney 
Island.  A  scholar  I  knew  once  told  me  the  name 
of  Coney  Island  in  Babylon;  but  he  died  recently, 
and  I  know  no  one  else  to  ask. 

[87] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

I  wish  that  I  could  remember  the  name,  but  never 
mind — of  course,  it  was  not  the  name  of  the  place 
where  the  most  fine  and  subtle  and  distinguished 
fugitives  from  humdrum  Babylon  made  their  refuge 
— and  yet  I  am  not  so  sure  that  it  was  not,  for,  after 
all,  if  a  place  like  Coney  Island  is  a  Palace  of  Poor 
Pleasures  for  Poor  Men,  do  we  find  the  rich  seeking 
pleasures  so  very  different — or  even  the  refined  gen- 
tlemen who  write  books  and  paint  pictures  and 
criticise  them? 

No,  Coney  Island  exists,  and  will  go  on  existing, 
because  into  all  men,  gentle  and  simple,  poor  and 
rich — including  women — by  some  mysterious  cory- 
bantic  instinct  in  their  blood,  has  been  born  a  tragic 
need  of  coarse  excitement,  a  craving  to  be  taken  in 
by  some  illusion  however  palpable. 

So,  following  the  example  of  those  old  nations, 
whose  place  she  has  so  vigorously  taken,  America 
has  builded  for  herself  a  Palace  of  Illusion,  and 
filled  it  with  every  species  of  talented  attractive 
monster,  every  misbegotten  fancy  of  the  frenzied 
nerves,  every  fantastic  marvel  of  the  moonstruck 
brain — and  she  has  called  it  Coney  Island.  Ironic 
name — a  place  lonely  with  rabbits,  a  spit  of  sandy 
beach  so  near  to  the  simple  fife  of  the  sea,  and 
watched  over  by  the  summer  night;  strange  Isle 
of  Monsters,  Preposterous  Palace  of  Illusion, 
gigantic  Parody  of  Pleasure — Coney  Island. 
[88] 


VIII 

THE    DREAM    CHILDREN    OF 
LITERATURE 

THERE  is  a  corner  of  the  world  of  dreams 
filled  with  the  voices  of  little  children,  as 
a  wood  is  filled  with  the  singing  of  birds. 
It  is  peopled  with  those  "nurslings  of  immortahty," 
who,  with  a  divine  precocity,  have,  as  we  say,  made 
names  for  themselves  no  less  personal  and  ever- 
lasting than  those  of  some  of  their  elders, — chil- 
dren as  typically  "childish"  as  some  great  soldier 
is  typically  soldierly,  or  as  Helen  of  Troy  is 
typically  womanly.  There  was  no  need  for  them 
to  grow  up  to  become  immortal,  for  they  live  for 
ever  just  because  they  are  always  children, — chil- 
dren, as  one  might  say,  who  have  supremely 
succeeded — as  children. 

Of  all  these  it  was  Paul  Dombcy  who,  uncon- 
sciously enough,  raised  the  banner  of  the  child. 
Dickens  is  very  near  to  Shakespeare  in  that  moment 
of  divination  when  the  little  frail  and  moonlit  Paul 
is  first  taken  to  school  and  confronted  with  the 
magnificent  Dr.  Blimbcr, — Dr.  Blimber,  who  means 
so  well  in  his  plush  middle-class  way. 

[89] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

"Shall  we  make  a  man  of  you?  "  asked  Dr. 
Blimber. 

Little  Paul  replied:   "I  would  rather  be  a  child." 

I  would  rather  be  a  child! 

Without  knowing  it,  how  right  little  Dombey 
was!  Who  is  there  amongst  us  that  does  not  pro- 
test against  growing  up,  does  not  battle  against 
maturity,  and  does  not  try  his  best  to  remain  a  child  ? 
Who  of  us  with  any  sense  is  anxious  to  grow  up? 
Is  it  not  always  felt  to  be  a  special  grace  of  nature 
when  we  say  of  anyone  that  he  has  kept  the  heart  of 
a  child  ?  This  we  say  of  Goldsmith,  of  Lamb,  and 
of  Stevenson,  with  the  sense  of  paying  them  signal 
tribute,  and  the  first  law  of  most  greatness  is  the 
law  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

To  be  made  a  man  of  by  Dr.  Blimber,  or  by  those 
other  disillusionising  agencies  of  experience  employed 
in  licking  our  immortal  beings  into  mortal  shape, 
may  be  a  very  fine  thing, — but  happy  is  he  who 
has  succeeded  in  remaining  a  child,  has  kept  his 
heart  pure,  has  escaped  the  pride  and  the  cynicism 
of  knowledge,  and  can  still  turn  eyes  of  uncon- 
taminated  simplicity  upon  human  life  and  all  the 
wonder  of  the  world. 

Dream  children! 

When  Lamb  wrote  that  immortal  fragment  of 
his  own  pathos,  he  was  thinking  of  two  little  children 
who  might  have  been  his,  had  he  not  through  life 

I  90] 


DREAM   CHILDREN 


remained  a  bachelor,  for  his  sister's  sake.  He 
cheered  his  lonely  evening  thought  with  the  fancy 
of  taking  little  Alice  and  John  on  his  knees,  and 
telling  them,  paternal  fashion,  about  the  time  when 
lie  was  a  child,  till  suddenly,  as  the  story  neared  its 
end,  the  soul  of  the  first  Alice  looked  out  of  the  eyes 
of  the  little  dream  Alice  so  poignantly  that  the  dream 
was  broken,  and,  as  the  children  faded  away,  he 
seemed  to  hear  them  saying:  "We  are  not  of 
Alice,  nor  of  thee,  nor  are  we  children  at  all.  The 
children  of  Alice  call  Bartrum  father.  We  are 
nothing;  less  than  nothing,  and  dreams.  We  are 
only  what  might  have  been.  ..." 

Perhaps  others  of  us  have  personal  dream  children 
of  this  sort, — the  little  boy  that  never  came  to  us, 
or  the  little  girl  that  went  too  early  away,  while 
she  was  still  a  mere  snowdrop  in  February;  but  it 
is  not  of  such  dream  children  I  would  write,  but 
rather  of  those  who  belong  to  the  whole  world's 
dreamland, — that  corner  of  the  world  of  dreams 
where  we  may  come  upon  a  little  girl  in  a  red  hood 
carrying  dainties  in  her  basket  for  an  old  grand- 
mother who  lives  in  a  lonely  hut  in  the  forest,  the 
same  forest  where  you  may  find  two  babes  lying 
asleep  under  a  coverlet  of  leaves  which  the  kind 
robins  are  spreading  over  them,  or  meet  with  Little 
Boy  Blue  blowing  his  horn,  or  come  just  in  time  to 
save  Little  Silverlocks  from  the  three  bears:  there 

[91] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

is  no  end  to  the  famous  people  you  may  meet  in  this 
corner  of  the  dream  world,  and  so  little  is  it  necessary 
to  grow  up  to  become  famous  that  one  can  seriously 
claim  that  there  are  no  names  better  known  than 
those  one  meets  with  there.  Think  of  being  as 
famous  as  Little  Red  Riding-hood!  Napoleon 
himself  is  hardly  as  well  known  as  Goody  Two- 
shoes!  Adelina  Patti  is  hardly  more  famous  than 
Mr.  Riley's  "Little  Orphant  Annie  !  "  Let  us 
wander  in  this  land  awhile,  and  see  if  we  can  meet 
with  any  more  of  its  famous  inhabitants! 

Yes;  here  comes  Kilmeny,  a  Scotch  maiden,  with 
a  strange  dream  on  her  face.  For  seven  long  years 
she  has  been  missing  from  her  home  in  the  glen, 
and  her  home-folks  mourn  her  as  dead. 

"Kilmeny,  Kilmeny,  where  have  you  been? 
Lang  hae  we  sought  baith  holt  and  den; 
By  linn,  by  ford,  and  greenwood  tree, 
Yet  you  are  halesome  and  fair  to  see. 
Where  gat  you  that  joup  [mantle]  o'  the  lily  sheen. 
That  bonnie  snood  of  the  birk  sae  green? 
And  these  roses,  the  fairest  that  ever  were  seen?     ' 
Kilmeny,  Kilmeny,  where  have  you  been?" 

Kilmeny  has  been  to  fairyland,  and  here  in  the 
twilight  she  is  coming  back  home  to  tell  them 
about  it  all. 

"Kilmeny  looked  up  with  a  lovely  grace, 
But  nae  smile  was  seen  on  Kilmeny 's  face; 

[92] 


DREAM   CHILDREN 


As  still  was  her  look  and  as  still  was  her  e'e, 

As  the  stillness  that  lay  on  the  emerant  lea, 

Or  the  mist  that  sleeps  on  a  waveless  sea. 

For  Kilmeny  had  been,  she  knew  not  where, 

And  Kilmeny  had  seen  what  she  could  not  declare; 

Kilmeny  had  been  where  the  cock  never  crew. 

Where  the  rain  never  fell,  and  the  wind  never  blew. 

But  it  seemed  as  the  harp  of  the  sky  had  rung. 

And  the  airs  of  heaven  played  round  her  tongue, 

When  she  spake  of  the  lovely  forms  she  had  seen, 

And  a  land  where  sin  had  never  been; 

A  land  of  love  and  a  land  of  light, 

Withouten  sun,   or  moon,   or  night; 

Where  the  river  swelled,  a  living  stream, 

And  the  light  a  pure  celestial  beam; 

The  land  of  vision,  it  would  seem, 

A  still,  an  everlasting  dream." 

But  she  will  stay  only  a  little  while,  and  then 
wander  back  to  fairyland.  She  was  not  of  this 
world,  after  all. 

"It  wasna  her  hame,  and  she  couldna  remain; 
She  left  this  world  of  sorrow  and  pain. 
And  returned  to  the  land  of  thought  again."  * 

But  here  is  a  less  eerie  apparition, — a  merry 
little  fellow,  without  shoes  or  stockings,  intent  on 
dabbling  up  and  down  the  stream.     He  calls  him- 

*  The  story  of  Kilmeny  is,  of  course,  told  by  James  Hogg,  the 
Ettrick  Shepherd,  in  the  beautiful  ballad  from  which  these  lines 
are  quotations. 

[93] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

self  "the  barefoot  boy,"   and,  if  you  know  your 
poets,   you  will   stroke   his  curly  head  and  say: — 

"  Blessings  on  thee,  little  man, 
Barefoot  boy,  with  cheek  of  tan! 
With  thy  turned-up  pantaloons. 
And  thy  merry  whistled  tunes; 
With  thy  red  lip,  redder  still 
Kissed  by  strawberries  on  the  hill; 
With  the  sunshine  on  thy  face, 
Through  thy  torn  brim's  jaunty  grace; 
From  my  heart  I  give  thee  joy, — 
I  was  once   a  barefoot   boy.  .  .  ." 

But  before  you  have  finished  he  will  have  escaped 
into  a  treetop,  and  be  whistling  back  to  the  wood 
robins. 

As  he  swings  there,  you  will  be  reminded  of  a 
similar  apparition  of  elfish  childhood  from  another 
land  and  another  time, — though  yet,  they  say, 
still  inhabiting  ours.  He  carries  a  bow  and  arrows, 
and  is  even  more  scantily  clad  than  our  "barefoot 
boy."  One  of  the  most  vivid  descriptions  I  can 
find  of  him  is  this  from  an  old  Greek  writer  (Longus) 
who  knew  him  well: — 

"As  I  entered  my  garden  to-day,  about  noon,  I 
espied  a  little  boy  under  my  pomegranates  and 
myrtles,  some  of  which  he  had  gathered;  and  he 
was  holding  them  in  his  hands.  His  complexion 
was  white  as  milk,  his  hair  a  bright  yellow,  and 
he  shone  as  if  he  had  just  been  bathing.     He  was 

[94] 


DREAM   CHILDREN 


naked  and  alone,  and  amused  himself  with  pluck- 
ing the  fruit  with  as  much  freedom  as  if  it  had  been 
his  own  garden.  ...  I  asked  him  to  what  neighbour 
he  belonged,  and  what  he  meant  by  gathering  what 
grew  in  another  person's  garden.  He  made  no 
reply,  but,  approaching  very  near  me,  smiled  sweetly 
in  my  face,  and  pelted  me  with  myrtle  berries,  and 
(I  know  not  how)  so  won  upon  me  that  my  anger 
was  appeased.  I  entreated  him  to  come  close  to 
me,  and  assured  him  that  I  wished  only  to  give  him 
one  kiss,  for  which  he  should  ever  after  have  liberty 
to  gather  as  much  fruit,  and  to  pluck  as  many 
fiow^ers  as  he  pleased.  Upon  hearing  me  thus 
address  him,  he  burst  into  a  merry  laugh,  and 
replied : — 

"  'I  am  not  the  child  I  appear  to  be;  but  I  am 
older  than  Saturn,  ay,  older  than  Time  himself. 
I  knew  you  well,  Philetas,  when  you  were  in  the 
flower  of  your  youth,  and  when  you  tended  your 
widely-scattered  flock  in  yonder  marsh.  I  was 
near  you,  when  you  sat  beneath  those  beech  trees, 
wooing  your  Amaryllis:  I  was  close  to  the  maiden, 
but  you  could  not  discern  me.  .  .  .  With  these 
words  he  sprang  like  the  youngling  of  a  nightingale 
among  the  myrtles,  and,  chmbing  from  bough  to 
bough,  ascended  through  the  foliage  to  the  summit 
of  the  tree.  I  observed  wings  upon  his  shoulders, 
and  between  them  a  tiny  bow  and  arrows;  but  in  a 
moment  I  could  see  neither  him  nor  them." 

This  charming  description  is  taken  from  "The 
Delectable  History  of  Daphnis  and  Chloe,"  that 
exquisite  idyl  of  boy  and  girl  love  which  may  be 

[95] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

called  the  Paul  and  Virginia  of  the  ancient  world; 
yet,  if  Daphnis  and  Chloc  and  Paul  and  Virginia 
are  little  more  than  children,  they  are,  perhaps 
too  near  to  the  frontier  of  grown-up  romance  to  be 
classed  among  "dream  children."  Our  dream 
children  are,  for  the  most  part,  in  that  earlier  period 
when  the  opposite  sex  is  an  uncongenial  rather  than 
a  congenial  mystery, — when  the  little  girl  is  apt  to 
regard  the  little  boy  as  a  disagreeable  species  of 
wild  animal,  and  the  little  boy  to  wonder  what  little 
girls  can  possibly  be  good  for.  Of  course,  there 
are  exceptions.  Fred  Vincy  married  little  Mary 
Garth  with  a  ring  taken  from  an  old  umbrella  stick, 
while  they  were  still  babies,  and  in  actual  life  such 
infantine  matrimony  is  not  unusual;  but,  so  far 
as  I  know,  it  has  found  no  striking  exponents  in 
childhood  romance.  We  must  not  forget,  though, 
that  Dante  and  Beatrice  were  only  nine  when  they 
first  met,  and,  if  their  story  belongs  rather  to  history, 
it  is  history  so  transformed  into  poetry  that  Dante's 
well-known  description  of  his  first  beholding  Beatrice 
may  well  go  among  our  "dream  pictures," — 

"...  when  first  the  glorious  lady  of  my  mind 
was  made  manifest  to  mine  eyes,  even  she  who  was 
called  Beatrice  by  many  who  know  not  wherefore, 
she  had  already  been  in  this  life  for  so  long  as  that, 
within  her  time,  the  starry  heaven  had  moved 
toward  the  eastern  quarter  one  of  the  twelve  parts 

[96] 


DREAM   CHILDREN 


of  a  degree;  so  that  she  appeared  to  me  at  the  begin- 
ning of  her  ninth  year  almost,  and  I  saw  her  almost 
at  the  end  of  my  ninth  year.  Her  dress,  on  that 
day,  was  of  a  most  noble  colour,  a  subdued  and 
goodly  crimson,  girdled  and  adorned  in  such  sort 
as  best  suited  with  her  very  tender  age.  At  that 
moment,  I  say  most  truly,  the  spirit  of  life,  which 
hath  its  dwelling  in  the  secretest  chamber  of  the 
heart,  began  to  tremble  so  violently  that  the  least 
pulses  of  my  body  shook  therewith;  and  in  trem- 
bling it  said  these  words:  ^Ecce  deus  jortior  me, 
qui,  veniens,  dominahitur  mihi.  [Here  is  a  deity 
stronger  than  I;  who,  coming,  shall  rule  over 
me.]'" 

Yet,  as  a  rule,  the  dream  children  of  fame  sel- 
dom go  in  couples,  though  now  and  again  we  do 
meet  them  holding  each  other's  hands  for  com- 
pany in  the  mysterious  wood  of  the  world.  Such 
a  forlorn  and  fear-stricken  pair,  which  the  imag- 
inative pity  of  centuries  has  long  immortalised, 
are,  of  course,  "The  princes  in  the  tower,"  shapes 
of  boyish  helplessness  in  an  evil  world,  which 
concentrate  more  dramatically  than  any  others  the 
piteous,  lonely  terror  of  children  before  the  menace 
of  the  unknown  evil  of  life.  We  have  seen  them 
in  many  pictures,  stealing  fearfully  among  the 
grim  shadows  of  the  wicked  old  stones,  and  has  not 
Shakespeare  shown  them  to  us,  in  such  a  pity  of 
innocent  sleep  that  even  their  murderers  turned  poets 
as  they  slew  them? — 

7  [97] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

"Lo,  thus,"  quoth  Dighton,   "lay  those  tender  babes!" 
"  Thus,  thus,"  quoth  Forrest,  "girding  one  another 
Within  their  innocent  alabaster  arms: 
Their  lips  were  four  red  roses  on  a  stalk, 

Which  in  their  summer  beauty  kissed  each  other. 
A  book  of  prayers  on  their  pillow  lay 
Which  once,"  quoth  Forrest,   "almost  changed  my 
mind  .  .  ." 

While  we  are  with  Shakespeare,  shall  we  not 
look  again  on  the  little  Arthur,  and  his  keeper, 
Hubert,  another  child  shape  lighting  up  like  a  lily 
the  dungeons  of  those  bloody  times, — another  boy 
prince  with  "his  little  kingdom  of  a  forced  grave?" 
But,  before  we  return  to  the  lonely  children,  let 
us  not  forget  a  happier  picture  of  a  famous  two,  that 
of  St.  Theresa  and  her  little  brother  setting  out — 
the  saintly  mites, — to  seek  for  martyrdom  among 
the  Moors! 

However,  as  I  said,  the  dream  child  is  usually 
met  alone,  and  the  fact  may  be  taken  as  symbolic 
of  that  pathetic  isolation  of  childhood  in  a  world 
of  grown-up  mysteries  for  which  even  the  kindest 
mother  somehow  fails  to  give  any  adequate  explana- 
tion. The  child  asks  this  question  and  that,  receives 
an  answer  no  less  puzzling  than  the  original  mystery, 
and  goes  back  again  into  his  loneliness,  to  ponder 
it  out  for  himself.  Perhaps  no  other  human  being 
is  so  lonely  as  a  thinking  child.  Surrounded,  on 
every  hand,  with  the  cabalistic  writing  of  the  strange 

[98] 


DREAM   CHILDREN 


world  into  which  he  has  suddenly  awakened,  he 
asks  himself,  again  and  again,  why  he  is  here,  how 
he  came,  and  what  it  all  means.  Of  course,  no 
one  can  tell  him,  because  no  one  knows  any  more 
about  it  than  himself, — but  the  grown-ups  don't 
say  that.  They  say  that  he  will  understand 
it  all  when  he  grows  up.  They  mean  that  he 
will  have  ceased  to  ask  questions,  found  com- 
monplace solutions,  or  given  up  expecting  an- 
swers,— as  the  shades  of  the  prison  house  more  and 
more  darken  around  the  eager  little  beam  of  inquiry. 
Even  a  Whittier  must  cease  to  be  a  barefoot  boy, 
and  even  a  Wordsworth,  so  sensitive  to  the  mystic 
harmonies  of  existence,  and  so  close  a  confidant 
of  the  soul  of  the  world,  has  sadly  to  confess  thus 
that  dimming  of  the  spiritual  eye,  that  deadening 
of  the  spiritual  ear,  which  comes  with  the  passing 
of  youth: — 

Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy! 
Shades  of  the  prison  house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  boy, 
But  he  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows, 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy; 
The  youth,  who  daily  farther  from  the  east 
Must  travel,  still  is  nature's  priest. 

And  by  the  vision  splendid 

Is  on  his  way  attended; 
At  length  the  man  perceives  it  die  away 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day. 

[99] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

Wordsworth  was  the  first  to  give  us  the  lonely 
child  in  Hterature,  and  to  say  over  the  names  of 
such  little  heroines  of  his  as  Lucy  Gray  and  Alice 
Fell  is  to  call  up  pictures  of  childhood  almost  unbear- 
ably wistful  with  their  penetrating  sense  of  solitari- 
ness. 

Oft  had  I  heard  of  Lucy  Gray; 

And,  when  I  crossed  the  wild, 
I  chanced  to  see,  at  break  of  day, 

The  solitary  child.  .  .  . 

How  simple  the  lines  are,  but  with  what  an  intense 
loneliness  they  fill  the  heart! — what  a  poignant 
tenderness  for  the  little  figures  so  forlorn  there  in 
all  that  wilderness  of  heath  and  sky! — ^and,  as  the 
poem  proceeds,  surely  the  pathos  of  all  children 
that  have  ever  lost  their  way  and  never  been  seen 
again  is  concentrated  in  its  broken-hearted  close. 

How  solitary,  too,  was  that  other  Lucy  whom 
Wordsworth  has  immortalised  thus: — 

A  maid  whom  there  was  none  to  praise, 
And  very  few  to  love: 

A  violet  by  a  mossy  stone. 

Half  hidden  from  the  eye; 
Fair  as  a  star,  when  only  one 

Is  shining  in  the  sky. 

The  little  maid  in  "We  Are  Seven"  seemed 
unconscious  of  her  solitude,  so  sure  was  she  that 

[  loo  ] 


DREAM   CHILDREN 


her  brothers  and  sisters  were  still  with  her,  though 
unseen;  yet  what  a  loneliness  is  there  in  the  verses, 
and  what  a  pathos  in  the  very  faith  with  which,  at 
sunset,  she  brings  her  little  porringer  into  the 
churchyard,  and  eats  her  supper  by  the  graves  of  her 
lost  playfellows.  Again,  how  the  "Solitary  Reaper" 
echoes  with  upland  loneliness : — 

"Behold  her,  single  in  the  field. 
Yon  solitary  Highland  lass, 
Reaping  and  singing  by  herself!  .  .  ." 

In  other  poets,  children  are  usually  represented 
as  romping  and  singing  in  happy  bands  at  play;  they 
arc  unindividualised  groups  of  joyous  creatures, 
like  clumps  of  primroses,  or  flocks  of  birds;  but 
with  Wordsworth,  for  whom,  as  we  know,  "  the 
child  is  father  to  the  man,"  theirs  is  already 
the  loneliness  of  the  individual,  with  the  added 
isolation  of  a  little  creature  "moving  about  in 
worlds  not  realised."  They  have  the  look  on 
their  faces  of  small  travellers  who  have  come  a 
long  journey,  and  find  themselves  set  down  in  a 
strange  land,  and  their  hearts  are  lonely  for  the 
brighter  land  they  have  left.  They  always  seem  to 
be  looking  for  the  hidden  road  home  again.  That 
is  the  meaning  of  that  wistful  look  upon  their  faces, 
and  who  knows  but  that,  when,  as  we  say,  they 
lose  their  way  in  the  snow,  they  have  really  found 
their  way  home.'* 

[lOl] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

With  Dickens,  the  archcreator  of  dream  children, 
it  is,  again,  as  with  Wordsworth,  always  the  lonely 
child,  and  with  what  a  love  did  his  great  heart  go 
out  to  the  little  beings  his  imagination  has  made 
immortal!  What  an  almost  divine  pity  he  has  for 
the  fears  and  bewilderments  and  hardships  of  their 
dependent  little  lives,  so  at  the  mercy  of  grim  elders, 
and  the  sport  of  all  manner  of  heartless  bullying 
forces!  Poor  David  Copperfield  and  that  dreadful 
new  father-in-law  of  his  with  the  black  whiskers, — 
how  one's  blood  runs  cold  for  him  as  Mr.  Murdstone 
takes  him  into  a  room  and  sternly  expounds  to  him, 
in  ogreish  words,  the  iron  discipline  to  be  expected 
for  breaches  of  the  law  in  that  sepulchral  household ! 
Children  are  not  beaten,  nowadays,  I  am  told. 
If  not,  the  change  is  largely  due  to  Dickens,  who 
has  certainly  done  much  to  mitigate  the  former 
severe  lot  of  the  child, — in  a  regime  where  the 
father  was  little  more  to  his  children  than  the  stern 
policeman  and  executioner  of  home,  the  dread 
Rhadamanthus  in  the  best  parlor,  who  must  on 
no  account  be  disturbed  by  childish  laughter,  and 
to  offend  whom  was  to  invite  swift  and  certain 
doom. 

How  much  has  Dickens  done  to  mitigate  the  lot 

of  the  schoolboy  by  his  savage  satire  of  Dotheboy's 

Hall,  and  the  lot  of  all  poor  boys  whatsoever  by 

the   pleading  figure  of  Oliver  Twist!    There  are 

[  102] 


DREAM   CHILDREN 


few  strokes  in  literature  so  trenchant  in  their  tragic 
laughter,  so  irresistibly  comic  in  their  shattering 
criticism  of  human  nature,  as  that  scene  which 
has  passed  into  the  proverbs  of  the  world, — the  scene, 
of  course,  where  poor  little  starved  Oliver  asks  for 
more.  The  astonishment  on  the  face  of  the  cook 
is  positively  Olympian  in  its  humour.  A  charity 
boy  ask  for  more !  Why,  the  very  walls  of  the  insti- 
tution rocked,  and  the  earth  quaked,  at  such  a 
request,  and  the  rumour  of  it  passed  like  thunder 
from  room  to  room,  till  even  the  board  of  directors, 
then  in  session,  must  have  heard  it.  Great  heavens ! 
"Oliver  Twist  has  asked  for  more." 

Again,  the  pity  of  the  lot  of  frail  and  sick  children 
foredoomed  to  death  from  their  cradles,  who  else 
has  ever  made  it  touch  the  heart  like  Dickens,  with 
Paul  Dombey  and  Tiny  Tim?  There  are  no 
children  in  the  world  of  dreams  whose  faces  we 
know  better  than  these:  Paul,  with  his  air  of  only 
paying  life  a  rather  weary  little  visit,  having  to  go 
soon,  and  brave  little  Tim,  who,  for  all  his  crutches 
and  irons,  would  sing  his  tiny  song, — a  song,  though, 
"about  a  lost  child  traveUing  in  the  snow," — and 
give  his  cheerful  toast  with  the  rest  at  the  Christmas 
dinner. 

How  like  Dickens  it  was  to  put  that  "  God  bless 
us,  every  one ! "  into  the  mouth  of  a  little  cripple  that 
was  soon  to  die.  Yes;  there  are  many  little  graves 
[103] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

in  Dickens's  volumes,  and  on  no  other  graves  in 
the  world,  perhaps,  have  so  many  tears  been 
shed. 

So  at  length  we  come  to  Little  Nell, — the  queen 
of  all  the  dream  children.  We  meet  her  often  in 
that  world  of  dreams,  from  the  moment  when 
she  first  looks  up  at  us  in  the  street,  a  self-possessed, 
but  "just  a  little  frightened"  wisp  of  a  child,  and 
begs  us  to  tell  her  the  way  home  to  her  grandfather's, 
to  the  moment  when  she  lies  silent  and  smiling  among 
the  winter  berries  and  green  leaves  she  had  loved. 
"When  I  die,"  she  had  said,  "put  near  me  some- 
thing that  has  loved  the  light,  and  had  the  sky 
above  it  always."  So  there  she  lies  among  the 
berries  and  the  green  leaves. 

"  You  do  well  to  speak  softly, "  says  her  old  grand- 
father. "We  will  not  wake  her.  I  should  be  glad 
to  see  her  eyes  again,  and  to  see  her  smile.  There 
is  a  smile  upon  her  young  face  now,  but  it  is  fixed 
and  changeless.  I  would  have  it  come  and  go. 
That  shall  be  in  Heaven's  good  time.  We  will  not 
wake  her." 

Nell,  too,  belongs  to  the  little  lonely  ones, — but 
surely  her  grave  is  not  lonely. 

Another  lonely  child  we  shall  often  meet  in  our 
corner  of  the  world  of  dreams  is  Maggie  Tulliver, 
much  communing  with  her  earnest  young  soul  "of 
God  and  nature  and  of  human  life,"  and  carrying 


DREAM   CHILDREN 


in  her  hand  an  old  thumbed  copy  of  "The  Imitation 
of  Christ."  No  one  else  has  understood  so  well 
as  George  Eliot  the  thoughtful  religious  child,  and 
portrayed  the  spiritual  agonies  of  the  young  with 
so  intimate  a  knowledge;  and,  incidentally,  one  may 
add  that  no  other  writer  has  described  with  such 
painful  reality  and  delightful  humour  the  sufferings 
of  such  children  from  prosaic  and  grotesque  relations. 

Another  dream  child,  too,  belongs  to  her, — the 
child  that  Silas  Marner  found  on  his  hearthstone, 
one  winter  evening,  whose  shining  curls  he  at  first 
mistook  for  his  stolen  gold  come  back  to  him  again; 
"but,  instead  of  the  hard  coin  with  the  familiar 
resisting  outline,  his  fingers  encountered  soft  warm 
curls,"  the  gold  that  was  to  soften,  not  harden,  his 
heart. 

At  the  thought  of  bright  babes  that  soften  the 
hearts  of  strong  men,  there  flashes  on  the  eye  across 
the  centuries  the  very  different  picture  in  which 
Homer  makes  us  behold  great  Hector,  all  dreadfully 
girt  in  his  war-harness,  taking  his  little  son  in  his 
arms  before  going  into  battle, — little  Astyanax, 
"like  unto  a  beautiful  star."  But  the  child,  "dis- 
mayed at  his  dear  father's  aspect,  in  dread  at  the 
bronze,  and  at  the  horsehair  crest  that  he  beheld 
nodding  fiercely  from  the  helmet's  top,"  shrinks 
from  him  and  cries  for  his  nurse,  and  Hector  and 
Andromache  laugh  together,  and  the  father  takes 
[105] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

off  the  dreadful  headgear,  so  that  the  child  is  no 
longer  afraid,  and,  tossing  him  in  his  arms,  prays 
aloud  to  Zeus  that  old  human  prayer — so  seldom 
answered, — that  he  may  become  a  better  man  than 
his  father! 

To  somersault  back  again  through  time,  we 
must  not  forget  our  Httle  friend  Alice,  the  type  of 
all  lonely  children  who  "make  up  things"  out  of 
the  wonderland  of  their  fancy,  and,  being  so  lonely, 
make  friends  of  the  very  furniture,  and  fairy  tales 
even  out  of  sofas, — like  the  boy  in  Stevenson's 
"child's  garden."  It  would  be  ungrateful  to  for- 
get such  still  older  friends  as  Sandford  and  Merton, 
Tom  Brown,  and  the  boy  who  has  stood  so  long 
upon  the  burning  deck.  Then  there  are  the  naughty 
children  Hke  Budge  and  Toddy,  the  impish  boys  like 
Flibbertigibbet  in  "  Kenil worth,"  and  the  gentle 
children  who  make  goodness  almost  as  fascinating 
as  naughtiness,  such  as  Timothy  of  the  Quest,  and 
Little  Lord  Fauntleroy. 

I  said  that  the  dream  children  seldom  go  in 
couples,  but  you  may  sometimes  meet  them  in 
companies  and  groups.  One  eager  company  you 
may  meet  at  the  heels  of  a  wizard  piper  playing  the 
sweetest  of  strange  tunes, — but  here  again  is  a  lonely 
child,  the  Tiny  Tim  of  mediaeval  legend,  the  little 
lame  boy  who  couldn't  keep  up  with  his  companions, 
and  came  to  the  fairy  hill  just  too  late,  only  in  time 
lio6] 


DREAM   CHILDREN 


to  catch  a  glimpse  of  its  shining  inside  and  hear  the 
great  doors  close  on  all  the  music  . 

Then  there  is  the  rosy  group  of  children  that 
pulled  at  Charlotte's  skirts  while  she  was  cutting 
bread,  and  made  Werther  think  that  she  never  before 
looked  so  charming  as  when  surrounded  by  all  this 
chubby  clamour. 

There  are,  doubtless,  other  groups  of  children  one 
might  think  of,  but  there  is  one  group  of  all  we  can 
not  forget,  that  sacred  little  group  that  years  ago 
in  Judea  brought  down  so  tender  a  blessing  upon 
all  children. 

Dream  children!  Yes!  if  we  grown-ups  are  such 
stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of, — what  must  the  children 
be? 


[107] 


IX 

BOOKS    AS    DOCTORS 

THE  medicinal  properties  of  books  have  long 
been  known  to  the  learned,  and  they  are  a 
favourite  topic  of  old  philosophers  and 
students.  That  quaint  old  specialist  on  melancholy, 
Robert  Burton,  in  his  famous  "Anatomy  of  Melan- 
choly," extols  reading  as  of  all  remedies  the  most 
efficacious.  " 'Tis,"  says  he,  "the  best  nepenthe, 
surest  cordial,  sweetest  alterative,  presentest  di- 
verter";  and  he  gathers  together,  in  his  quaint 
way,  the  testimonials  of  all  manner  of  men,  kings 
and  saints  and  poets,  telling  us  how  Cardan  calls 
a  library  "the  physick  of  the  soul,"  how  Ferdinand 
and  Alphonsus,  kings  of  Aragon  and  Sicily,  "were 
both  cured  by  reading  the  history,  one  of  Curtius, 
the  other  of  Livy,  when  no  prescribed  physick "  was 
of  avail,  and  so  on. 

The  Scriptures  he  compares  to  "an  apothecary's 
shop,  wherein  are  remedies  for  all  infirmities, 
purgatives,  cordials,  alteratives,  corroboratives, 
lenitives";  this  only  being  required, — "that  the  sick 
man  take  the  potion  which  God  hath  already 
tempered."  The  medical  efficacy  of  sacred  writings, 
[io8] 


BOOKS   AS   DOCTORS 


whether  or  not  we  regard  the  belief  as  superstitious, 
has  been  practically  believed  in  and  acted  upon  in 
all  times  and  among  all  peoples.  A  text  suspended 
round  the  neck  has  seemed  more  than  equal  to  a 
bottle  of  medicine,  and  it  would  not,  perhaps,  be 
fantastic  to  ascribe  a  large  share  in  the  vigorous 
health  of  our  forefathers  to  their  constant  reading 
of  the  Bible.  In  our  day  there  is  a  certain  book 
which,  perhaps  more  than  any  other  in  any  time, 
illustrates  humanity's  deep  faith  in  the  curative 
properties  of  literature.  It  takes  the  place  of  doctors 
for  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  apparently 
intelligent  people.  Who  of  us  suffering  from  some  ail- 
ment has  not  among  his  acquaintances  a  gentle  friend, 
who,  hearing  of  his  trouble,  will  confidently  place 
in  his  hand  a  slim  book  in  flexible  morocco  binding, 
saying,  "Read  this,  and  you  will  need  no  medicine." 
Such  is  the  touching  faith  of,  I  suppose,  millions 
of  people  in  the  gospel  according  to  Mary  Baker 
Eddy.  But,  evidently,  it  is  no  part  of  my  business 
to  throw  discredit  on  that  conviction.  Rather  is  it 
my  wish  to  extend  the  application  of  that  principle 
to  other — and,  dare  I  say  it?  better, — literature. 
The  fundamental  tenet  of  Christian  Science  is,  I 
understand,  that  all  disease  exists  only  in  the  mind, 
and  Christian  Science,  therefore,  quite  appropriately, 
one  might  say  necessarily,  brings  the  cure  in  the 
form  of  a  book.     We  have  not  waited,  of  course, 

[  109] 


ATTITUDES   AND  AVOWALS 

for  Christian  Science  to  teach  us  the  power  of 
the  mind  over  the  body,  though,  in  specialising  that 
truth,  it  has  given  a  motive  of  achievement  to  a 
useful  principle.  What  shall  minister  to  a  mind 
diseased,  if  not  the  food  and  physic  of  the  mind, — 
literature?  For  mental  sickness,  mental  heahng; 
and,  if  all  sickness  be  mental,  obviously  the  shortest 
way  to  a  cure  is  through  the  mind.  If  gout,  for 
example,  is  merely  the  physical  expression  of  some 
mental  disorder,  it  is  surely  better  to  attack  it  at 
its  source  in  the  mind,  rather  than  at  its  remote 
extension  in  the  great  toe.  The  aim,  therefore,  of 
the  literary  doctor,  in  such  a  case,  would  be  to  dis- 
cover the  initial  trouble  in  the  mind  of  the  sufferer 
and  apply  to  it  the  appropriate  literary  remedies.  I 
am  not  aware  that  any  doctor  has  as  yet  undertaken 
the  systematic  literary  treatment  of  disease,  but  I 
am  convinced,  and,  indeed,  it  is  easy  to  see,  that 
such  treatment  is  not  only  feasible,  but  likely,  with 
the  advance  of  mental  science,  to  take  an  important 
place  among  those  methods  for  the  alleviation  of 
human  suffering  of  which  we  can  not  have  too 
many.  When  the  science,  for  which  I  merely 
throw  out  a  few  suggestions,  shall  have  become 
definitely  organised,  the  library  will  take  the  place 
of  the  dispensary,  and,  instead  of  giving  us  pre- 
scriptions composed  of  nauseous  drugs,  the  physician 
will  write  down  the  titles  of  deHghtful  books, — books 
[no] 


BOOKS   AS   DOCTORS 


tonic  or  narcotic,  stimulating  or  sedative,  as  our 
need  may  be. 

Thus,  at  the  outset,  illness  will  be  robbed  of  half 
its  misery, — the  customary  disagreeable  processes 
of  getting  well.  Instead  of  painful  surgery,  or 
evil-tasting  doses  of  ugly-looking  drugs,  we  shall 
be  indulged  with  the  energising  essences,  or  the 
honeyed  cordials,  of  great  and  charming  books, 
and,  when  medicine  time  comes  round,  instead  of 
tablespoon  and  phial,  and  "mixture  as  before," 
the  dainty  nurse  will  seat  herself  at  one's  bedside, 
volume  in  hand,  with  an  eagerly  anticipated  "Now 
it  is  time  for  another  chapter" ;  or  "  I  think  it  is  time 
for  your  poetry,  Mr.  So  and  So";  and  the  doctor's 
visit,  instead  of  being  an  ordeal,  will  be  looked 
forward  to  as  a  pleasant  exchange  of  literary  con- 
fidences. That  doctor,  by  the  way,  will,  more 
often  than  at  present,  be  a  lady;  for  one  incidental 
outcome  of  the  establishment  of  literary  medicine 
will  be  an  increase  in  the  number  of  lady  doctors, 
the  feminine  mind  being  more  receptive  to  literary 
influences  than  the  masculine,  and  more  ready  to 
welcome  literary  originality  and  innovation,  as  we 
have  seen  in  the  case  of  Browning  and  Meredith 
and  Ibsen,  prophets  whose  first  vogue  was  largely 
due  to  women. 

Much  observation  and  experiment  will  necessarily 
have  to  be  undertaken  before  literary  therapeutics 
[III] 


ATTITUDES   AND  AVOWALS 

can  be  established  on  any  such  firm  basis  as  the 
more  famihar  methods  of  medical  science,  but  it  is 
not  difficult  to  forecast  the  main  lines  upon  which 
it  will  proceed,  and  it  is  easy  for  anyone  to  make 
simple  experiments  upon  himself  or  his  friends. 
I  would  certainly  hesitate  to  do  more  than  indicate 
a  few  possible  principles  for  general  application. 
Difficult  ailments  would  of  necessity  need  complex 
and  experienced  treatment,  for  the  new  literary 
medicine  will  be  no  slapdash  quackery,  pretending 
to  cure  all  the  complicated  ills  of  man  with  one 
uniform  bolus.  By  no  means!  On  the  contrary, 
it  will  be  the  most  subtly  adjusted  treatment  imagin- 
able, based  on  the  most  minute  and  painstaking 
study  of  the  patient's  mental  and  spiritual  as  well 
as  physical  condition. 

The  broad  principles  underlying  this  course  will 
be  subject  to  as  many  variations  and  niceties  of 
application  as  there  are  patients,  and  it  is  easy  to 
see  what  delicate  skill  will  be  needed  by  one  whose 
field  of  operation  is  the  terribly  sensitive  nerve  matter 
of  the  mind,  rather  than  the  coarser  fibre  of  the 
body.  Think  of  the  risk,  in  a  dangerous  case,  of 
prescribing  the  wrong  author!  Suppose,  in  that 
case  of  gout,  for  example,  an  inexperienced  young 
literary  doctor  should  prescribe  for  an  irascible  old 
colonel  half -hourly  doses  of  Keats  or  Shelley! 
Imagine  the  immediate  rise  in  the  patient's  temper- 

[112] 


BOOKS  AS   DOCTORS 


ature  and  the  perilously  accelerated  action  of  the 
heart!  The  doctor  might  count  himself  lucky 
if  apoplexy  did  not  supervene.  Gout,  in  any  case, 
would  be  a  difficult  disease  to  treat,  chiefly  from  that 
irascibility  which  is,  perhaps,  its  best-known  symp- 
tom. From  that  point  of  view,  light,  amusing  books 
would,  of  course,  be  advisable,  or  books  dealing 
with  hunting  or  any  other  form  of  sport.  The 
novels  of  J.  G.  Whyte  Melville  and  Captain  Hawley 
Smart  have  often  proved  invaluable,  in  such  cases. 
But  here  we  come  upon  one  of  the  difficulties  of  the 
new  science;  for  too  exclusive  use  of  such  books 
would  be  highly  inadvisable,  for  the  reason  that  while, 
indeed,  they  divert  the  patient  from  his  troubles  and 
keep  him  in  good  temper,  they  at  the  same  time  are 
filUng  his  mind  with  pictures  of  that  full-blooded 
jolly  life  from  which  his  troubles  have  arisen,  and 
are  thus  nourishing  at  its  very  centre  the  mental 
roots  of  his  disease.  What  our  gout  patient  really 
needs  is  literature  that  will  break  up  rather  than 
continue  his  mental  habits, — literature  that  will 
de-materialise  him,  and  clarify  his  blood  with  austere 
and  spiritualising  nutriment, — hterature,  in  short, 
that  will  make  him  entirely  forget  his  stomach  and 
remember  only  his  soul. 

But  how  to  reconcile  him  to  such  a  diet!  Such 
nutriment  is  not  easily  disguised,  and  to  administer 
such  an  ethereal  tonic  in  the  capsule  of  a  sporting 

8  [113] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

novel  seems  hardly  feasible.  Probably  the  best 
general  treatment  for  such  a  case  would  be  a  course 
of  Shakespeare,  for  in  Shakespeare  the  combination 
of  humanity  with  ideal  poetry  is  so  successful  that 
the  gouty  colonel,  while  laughing  at  Falstaff,  would, 
at  the  same  time,  without  being  uncomfortably 
conscious  of  it,  be  breathing  in  that  crystalline  air 
that  blows  about  the  peaks  of  the  masterpieces. 

At  the  opposite  pole  from  our  gout  patient  one 
can  imagine  similar  difficulties  of  treatment  to 
arise.  Here,  say,  we  have  a  consumptive,  anaemic 
patient,  who  is  already  ethereal  enough  and  needs 
to  be  fed  on  the  beef  and  brawn  of  literature.  But 
for  such  literature  the  patient  has  no  taste.  On 
the  contrary,  he  languishes  for  Maeterlinck  and 
the  poets  of  moonshine;  whereas  the  food  he  needs 
for  his  all  too  sidereal  brains  is  such  earthly  human 
writers  as  Fielding,  Dickens,  and  Balzac.  Here, 
again,  Shakespeare  may  be  recommended  as  the 
divine  compromise.  There  is  another  great  writer 
who,  in  all  cases  of  doubtful  treatment,  may  unfail- 
ingly be  resorted  to, — Alexandre  Dumas,  who  comes 
nearest  of  all  writers  to  being  a  literary  cure-all. 
He  is  incomparably  the  most  useful  writer  for  all 
nervous  diseases,  but  indeed  there  is  no  form  of 
sickness  to  which  he  may  not  be  applied.  A  set 
of  Dumas  is  as  indispensable  in  a  sick-room  as  a 
nurse  or  pure  air.     In  all  cases  likely  to  prove  serious 

[114] 


BOOKS  AS   DOCTORS 


or  long,  the  doctor  should  immediately  send  in  a  set 
of  Dumas,  whatever  subsequent  finesse  of  treat- 
ment may  prove  necessary.  The  reason  is  evident. 
One  of  the  first  necessities  of  the  successful  treat- 
ment of  disease,  and  particularly  so  when  the  treat- 
ment is  mental,  is  the  distraction  of  the  patient's 
mind  from  his  complaint.  Now,  of  all  writers, 
Dumas  has  the  power  of  thus  taking  us  out  of  our- 
selves. So  great,  indeed,  is  his  power,  in  this  respect, 
that  I  can  imagine  painful  operations  being  per- 
formed with  no  other  anesthetic  than  a  chapter 
or  two  from  the  lives  of  D'Artagnan,  or  that 
equally  fascinating  hero,  Bussy  D'Amboise.  Of 
all  books  ever  written,  "The  Three  Musketeers" 
and  "Madame  De  Monsoreau"  have  most  of  this 
magic  gift ;  and  a  greater  boon  to  suffering  humanity 
than  such  enchanted  oblivion  cannot  be  named. 
No  other  such  treasure  of  self-forgetfulness  has  ever 
been  bestowed  upon  mankind  as  the  novels  of  Alex- 
andre Dumas.  And  the  happy  thing,  too,  is  that 
they  are  practically  inexhaustible,  for  so  gloriously 
voluminous  are  they  that,  by  the  time  one  has  read 
them  all  through,  he  is  sufficiently  remote  from  his 
first  reading  to  be  able  to  start  in  and  read  them  all 
over  again.  When  Dumas  was  born  insomnia  lost 
its  terrors;  for,  so  long  as  one  has  a  volume  of  his 
for  company,  he  can  easily  face  the  most  sleepless 
night  without  fear,  and,  when  at  last  he  falls  asleep, 

[115] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

it  is  with  the  contented  weariness  of  a  mind  healthily 
fatigued  with  exhilarating  exercise.  Dickens  and 
Balzac  run  this  author  close,  in  this  respect,  but 
both  need  a  greater  mental  effort  than  Dumas, 
whose  dashing  narrative  seems  to  run  sparkling 
into  our  minds, — almost,  indeed  quite,  without  our 
consciousness  of  reading.  Nor  must  we  forget 
Tolstoi, — in  his  earlier  books, — among  the  great 
masters  of  forgetfulness.  I  have  known  a  case  of 
asthma  of  years'  standing  all  but  cured  by  "  Peace 
and  War,"  the  long-drawn  delight  of  the  cure  being 
nicely  apportioned  to  the  long-drawn  distress  of  the 
disease.  I  have  also  found  Victor  Hugo  useful  in 
cases  of  asthma.  Among  moderns,  Mark  Twain 
may  be  mentioned  as  a  universal  specific,  though, 
owing  to  a  certain  tendency  in  him  to  provoke  fits 
of  laughter,  he  is  to  be  read  with  great  caution  in 
all  pulmonary  or  bronchial  complaints,  as  in  such 
cases  those  fits  of  laughter  are  apt  to  provoke  dan- 
gerous fits  of  coughing.  But,  generally  speaking, 
humourous  books  are  of  all  books  the  most  useful  in 
literary  treatment.  Laughter  is  the  most  spontaneous 
and  health-giving  of  all  our  emotions,  and  the  man 
who  can  make  us  laugh  in  a  large,  whole-hearted 
way  is,  perhaps,  the  most  important  benefactor 
of  the  race.  In  this  respect  no  modern  has  equalled 
Dickens,  and  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  literary 
dispensary  is  more  poorly  furnished  in  books  of 
[ii6] 


BOOKS  AS   DOCTORS 


laughter  than  in  any  other  kind.  Real  big  laughter 
seems  a  lost  art  in  literature,  at  the  moment.  A 
new  brand  of  "pills  to  purge  melancholy"  would 
be  sure  of  a  wide  welcome. 

But  here,  as  always,  the  individual  patient  must 
be  carefully  considered.  There  are  some  patients 
who  resent  with  shrill  irritation  books  that  make 
it  their  evident  business  to  amuse  or  otherwise  enter- 
tain,— serious-minded  patients  who  find  humour 
childish  and  fiction  frivolous, — who  take  their 
pleasures  sadly  and  can  only  be  diverted  by  books 
of  solid  purpose  or  useful  information.  As  there  is 
no  lack  of  such  books  in  every  library,  the  physician 
will  find  it  easy  to  prescribe,  in  such  cases,  but  I 
may  suggest  for  his  guidance  that  he  should  by  no 
means  overlook  the  somewhat  curious  efficacy  of 
sermons.  For  a  numerous  class  of  patients  volumes 
of  epigrammatic  homilies  provide  a  distracting 
excitement  which  no  other  form  of  literature  can 
give;  for  such  Dumas  and  Dickens  are  not  to  be 
mentioned  with  T.  De  Witt  Talmagc.  One  has 
always  to  remember  that  amusement  and  distraction 
are  relative  things.  There  are  not  a  few  people, 
and  not  the  least  human,  to  whom  games  of  any 
sort  are  the  dreariest  of  all  serious  things.  The 
games  seem  so  consciously  and  desperately  set  to 
divert  us,  that,  for  some  people,  a  hard  day's  work  at 
the  office  is  vastly  more  amusing  than  a  hand  at 

[117] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

cards  or  a  game  of  chess.  Pleasure  is  an  exceedingly 
personal  matter,  and  other  people's  pleasures  are 
among  the  deep  mysteries  of  life;  but  thus  much 
is  sure, — there  is  no  use  in  our  offering  them  ours. 
One  danger,  therefore,  which  but  slightly  applies 
to  other  forms  of  therapeutics,  the  literary  physician 
will  need  to  be  on  his  guard  against, — the  pre- 
scribing of  a  medicine  because  he  happens  to  like 
it  himself.  He  may  have  a  private  weakness  for 
George  Meredith  or  Walter  Pater  or  Henry  James, 
and  be  very  much  tempted  to  indulge  himself  by 
making  a  curative  fad  of  such  writers,  as  occasionally 
one  finds  an  ordinary  doctor  making  a  habit  of 
prescribing  some  fashionable  drug  under  all  possible 
and  even  impossible  circumstances.  No,  the  liter- 
ary physician  must  sink  his  own  personal  predilec- 
tions, and,  if  it  seems  likely  that  the  patient  will  be 
benefited,  say  by  doses  of  Marie  Corelli,  he  must 
prescribe  the  distasteful  mixture  without  flinching. 
One  may  note  here,  as  a  side  issue  of  the  practice 
of  literary  medicine,  what  a  new  and  lucrative  field 
it  will  open  up  for  the  writer,  inaugurating  quite  a 
new  demand  for  his  books,  and,  incidentally,  a  vast 
new  area  of  advertisement.  Books,  then,  in  addition 
to  their  circulation  merely  as  literature,  will  enjoy, 
also,  the  broadcast  publication  of  patent  medicines, 
and  be  advertised  accordingly.  In  the  publishers' 
columns,  the  press  notices  of  a  certain  book  will 
f   iiS  1 


BOOKS  AS   DOCTORS 


contain  not  only  the  opinions  of  the  literary  critics, 
but  the  testimonials,  also,  of  the  highest  medical 
authorities.  The  question  asked  of  a  new  book 
then  will  be  not  merely  how  well  it  is  written,  but 
also  for  what  complaint  it  is  the  latest  remedy. 
Chronic  invalids  will  scan  the  literary  columns 
in  hope  of  a  new  nostrum.  Writers,  too,  who  fall 
short  somewhat  of  the  high  literary  qualities  may 
j&nd  consolation  in  this  medical  usefulness.  Mr. 
So  and  So's  style  may  with  justice  be  described  as 
atrocious,  but  then, — as  a  specific  for  lumbago  and 
sciatica,  he  has  no  equal.  "Try  Mr.  Smith's 
great  liver  novel!  " — "Can't  you  sleep  at  night? 
— Read  Mr.  Piper's  new  poems:  highly  recommended 
by  the  faculty;  at  all  drug  stores!  " — "The  ingredi- 
ents of  Mrs.  Truelove's  great  rheumatism  romance 
analysed  by  the  Society  of  Analytical  Chemists," 
and  so  on.  Such  are  the  advertisements  we  may 
expect  to  see,  when  the  medical  efficacy  of  literature 
has  come  to  be  recognised  and  the  new  school  of 
literary  therapeutics  which  I  have  foreshadowed 
is  an  accomplished  fact. 

To  return,  for  a  final  word,  to  the  more  serious 
side  of  the  subject, — there  will,  at  all  events,  be' 
one  branch  of  the  healing  science  in  which  literary 
therapeutics  will  surpass  all  others, — the  art  of 
alleviating  what  it  cannot  cure.  For  those  sad  ones 
who  may  never  hope  to  be  cured  in  this  world  the 

l"9] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

ordinary  doctor  can  be  of  little  avail.  His  medicines 
can  bring  neither  peace  nor  patience,  nor  has  he  the 
secret  of  any  balm  or  nepenthe  for  such  enduring 
affliction.  But  here  the  literary  pharmacopoeia  is 
rich,  indeed,  and  the  books  of  courage  and  consola- 
tion and  good  cheer  are,  perhaps,  more  numerous 
than  any  others,  so  invincible  is  the  instinctive  faith 
and  hope  in  the  heart  of  man ;  and,  while  the  literary 
physician  no  more  than  any  other  can  ward  off  that 
last  initiatory  sickness  of  our  dissolution,  he  can  at 
least  do  more  than  any  other  to  sweeten  its  bitterness 
and  to  prepare  the  soul  to  meet  the  great  physician, 
Death,  with  a  firm  heart  and  calm  eyes. 


[120] 


X 


ON   THE    LOVABLENESS    OF 
LORDS 

An  Englishman  dearly  loves  a  lord. — Old  Proverb. 

PUBLIC  opinion  delights  to  exercise  itself 
on  few  subjects  more  enthusiastically  than 
on  the  marriages  between  European  noble- 
men and  American  heiresses.  Its  superficial  dis- 
approval of  these  matches  is  passionate,  indeed 
almost  hysterical,  with  interest — almost  as  hysterical 
as  the  mad  rush  of  the  female  bourgeoisie  to  the 
spectacle  of  their  bridals.  Both  parties  to  the 
contract — or  "deal,"  as  it  is  sometimes  unkindly 
called — are  condemned  in  turn.  The  nobleman 
is  obviously  marrying  the  heiress  for  her  money; 
the  heiress  is  obviously  marrying  the  nobleman  for 
his  title.  One  is  an  "adventurer,"  the  other  is  a 
snob.  In  these  strictures  it  is  never  for  a  moment 
surmised  that,  in  addition  to  the  supposedly  pur- 
chasable commodities  on  either  side,  the  two  young 
people  may  be  genuinely  in  love  as  well;  or  that  the 
lord,  for  his  part,  is  a  charming  fellow  and  a  true 
gentleman,   whom  even  a  woman  not  an   heiress 

[I2I] 


ATTITUDES   AND  AVOWALS 

might  well  love;  and  that  the  heiress,  for  her  part, 
is  so  beautiful,  and  so  truly  a  lady,  that  though  she 
walked  in  rags  instead  of  million  dollar  bills,  any 
king  upon  his  throne  would  gladly  play  the  part  of 
King  Cophetua. 

Such  considerations  as  these  are  entirely  ignored 
by  that  impertinent  censorship  of  public  opinion. 
Also,  no  one  ever  takes  the  trouble  to  ask  how  these 
marriages  turn  out,  whether  or  no  they  have  satisfied 
"the  high  contracting"  parties,  and  that  something 
more  than  title  or  money  has  indeed  changed  hands; 
whether,  indeed,  this  marriage  made  in  Wall  Street 
has  not  proved  itself  to  have  been  made  in  heaven 
as  well. 

My  acquaintance  with  the  society  of  the  great 
world  is  far  too  limited  for  me  to  attempt  an  answer 
to  the  last  speculation,  though  in  my  humble  capac- 
ity as  a  democratic  reader  of  the  newspapers — with 
your  true  democrat's  interest  in  the  Hfe  of  his  supe- 
riors— I  have  not  observed  that  these  international 
marriages  have  failed — at  all  events,  publicly.  Of 
course,  one  never  knows;  but  cases  of  acute  matri- 
monial failure  are  apt  to  become  public  property 
in  these  days,  particularly  when  the  incompatibles 
are  conspicuous  by  money  or  by  birth.  Indeed, 
if  one  may  judge  by  the  absence  of  cabled  scandal, 
the  lord  has  usually  proved  himself  worth  the  money, 
and  the  American  heiress  worn  the  "title"   with 

[  122] 


THE  LOVABLENESS   OF  LORDS 

as  true  a  distinction  as  any  lady  born  into  Burke 
or  Debrett. 

But  even  let  us  suppose  that  in  some  cases  the 
simple  human  happiness  of  married  love  has  been 
missed,  or  even  that  it  was  never  conceived  on  either 
side  as  part  of  the  promised  ''consideration";  that 
both  parties  joined  hands  on  their  bargain  with,  as 
we  say,  their  eyes  open — who  shall  say  that  the 
bargain  was  a  bad  one,  or  that  neither  had  the  right 
to  make  it?  It  is  not  everyone  that  seeks  merely 
an  amorous  happiness  in  marriage.  It  is  only 
the  very  wise  and  simple  that  marry  for  home  and 
children.  There  are  other  ways  of  being  happy, 
and  it  may  well  be  that  a  marriage  may  be  entirely 
"happy" — that  is,  satisfactory  ahke  to  husband 
and  wife — without  love  entering  into  it.  Many 
beautiful  women  are  born  whose  instincts  are  rather 
social  than  maternal,  whose  happiness  lies  in  the 
gratification  of  social  and  personal  ambition.  To 
this  end  they  may  lack  but  one  condition — the 
entree  into  those  spheres  where  only  such  glory 
is  to  be  won.  They  have  beauty,  they  have  manners 
— but  their  father  is  a  pork-packer.  His  tastes — 
bless  him! — are  simple  as  his  pursuits.  He  is 
the  rough  quarry  out  of  which  his  daughter's 
beauty — and  diamonds — were  dug.  Socially  speak- 
ing, he  has  but  one  advantage,  and  the  advantage 
is  tremendous — at  all  events,  for  his  daughter.  He 
I  123] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

is  self-made,  it  is  true;  but,  then,  he  is  made  of  money. 
There  is  nothing — good  heart  as  he  usually  is! — 
that  he  will  not  buy  to  make  his  daughter  happy. 
The  daughter  whispers,  "A  title." 

Now,  to  the  eye  of  superficial  democratic  criticism, 
"a  title"  may  seem  a  poor  thing  in  exchange  for  a 
few  million  dollars — a  mere  Old  World  spangle 
that  would  be  a  poor  exchange,  in  fact,  for  a  five- 
cent  piece.  Of  course,  there  are  odds  in  titles. 
Some  would  be  scarcely  worth  stealing.  But,  gen- 
erally speaking,  a  title  is  the  most  valuable  of  all 
natural  gifts — for  obviously  it  is  a  natural  gift;  and 
don't  forget,  by  way  of  illustration,  that  "gifts" 
are  always  looked  upon  as  the  most  valuable  of 
human  commodities.  M.  Paderewski  was  born 
with  a  "gift" — so  was  Mr.  Kipling,  so  was  Lord 
Rosebery.  Lord  Rosebery  has  other  gifts,  but  his 
chief  natural  gift  was  "a  title,"  for  it  was  his  title 
that  set  his  other  gifts  upon  a  hill  they  might  not 
have  climbed  of  themselves.  "A  title!  "  exclaims 
some  indignant  democrat.  "What  value  is  there  in 
that  ?  "  Well,  precisely  the  value  attaching  to  a  piece 
of  money,  the  value  set  upon  it  by  society — yes,  one 
might  almost  say  of  humanity..  "  Snobs  and  fools!" 
your  indignant  democrat  may  fume.  Yes;  but, 
then,  however  wrong  humanity  may  be  in  its  stand- 
ards, there  is  little  use  in  denying  that  anything 
upon  which  it  sets  the  stamp  of  value  is — humanly 
[  124] 


THE  LOVABLENESS   OF  LORDS 

speaking — valuable,  and  becomes  a  fact  to  be 
counted  with,  however  reluctantly.  Therefore,  on 
the  ground  of  general  acceptance  alone,  "a  title" 
is  one  of  the  most  valuable  of  human  assets. 

If  you  have  a  title,  you  need  little  else.  Unless 
you  are  quite  impossible,  all  other  things  will  be 
added  unto  you.  Merely,  then,  on  its  face  value, 
a  title  is  at  least  the  equal,  financially  speaking, 
of  a  million-dollar  bill,  for  precisely  the  same  reason 
— because  both  title  and  dollar  bill  are  symbols  to 
which  the  world  has  agreed  to  attach  an  exceedingly 
high  value.  Mr.  Bryan  would  call  the  value  more 
or  less  fictitious  in  both  cases,  and  Mr.  Bryan's 
opinion  is  a  valuable  fact,  too — with  no  little  financial 
value,  even  yet.  If  only  he  can  remould  us  nearer 
to  his  heart's  desire,  the  value  both  of  lords  and  of 
gold  will  considerably  decrease.  For  the  present, 
however,  we  live  under  an  aristocratic  gold  standard, 
and  to  have  been  born  with  a  title,  as  I  said,  is  as 
good  as  having  been  born  with  a  million-dollar  bill 
in  your  mouth — "payable,"  of  course,  "in  gold." 

But  I  must  not  be  misunderstood  as  thinking  that 
an  American  girl  marries  a  lord  merely  from  snob- 
bish superstition.  On  the  contrary,  I  desire  to  vin- 
dicate her  preference  for  European  nobility  on  higher 
and  more  essential  grounds.  In  fact,  it  is  not  so 
much  the  lord  she  loves  as  Europe — Europe,  with 
its  romance,  its  distinction,  its  art  of  living.  She  may 
[125] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

be,  and  I  fancy  usually  is,  decorously  impatient  of 
the  family  nonentities  with  whom  her  marriage 
necessitates  insincere  contact.  Even  marriage  into 
the  worst  families  necessitates  that  kind  of  for- 
bearance. She  has  no  superstition  about  a  dreary 
dowager,  or  some  drunken  cad  of  a  high-born 
brother-in-law.  Not  all  the  dollars  in  the  world 
can  quite  buy  us  immunity  from  the  family  bore. 
Yet  think  what  else  this  so-called  purchase  of  "a 
title"  has  brought  her!  She  had,  indeed,  a  wonder- 
ful home  in  Illinois.  Its  taste  was  perfect,  its  beauty 
was  delicately  magnificent.  One  might  even  say 
that  for  sheer  intrinsic  beauty  and  refinement  it 
surpassed  her  new  home  in  Buckinghamshire.  But, 
then,  it  was  only  ten  years  old — and  it  was  in  Illinois. 
People  who  cannot  for  the  life  of  them  see  why 
a  great  pianist  is  better  worth  listening  to  than  a 
pianola  will  be  at  a  loss  to  understand  her  taste — 
and  her  old  father,  perhaps,  in  particular.  But, 
then,  you  see,  while  he  has  been  at  work  in  the  stock- 
yards she  has  been  worshipping  in  Rome,  in  Nurem- 
berg, in  Stratford-on-Avon,  in  Bayreuth.  She  had 
learned  there  that  there  are  two  qualities  in  the 
world  mysteriously  valuable — Antiquity  and  Style; 
and  that  they  go  inseparably  together.  It  is  that 
fatal  education  her  poor,  rich  father  has  worked 
so  hard  to  provide  that  has  made  her  love  a  lord — 
that  is,  made  her  love  these  old  stones,  these  old 
[126] 


THE  LOVABLENESS   OF  LORDS 

oaks,  and  these  galleries  filled  with  dreamlike  faces. 
Just  walk  with  her  into  the  old  Italian  garden,  with 
its  fragrance  of  antique  flowers,  its  high-clipped 
hedges,  its  fish  ponds  of  monastic  carp,  its  pagan 
images  here  and  there  in  unvisited  shrubberies, 
the  very  bricks  of  the  old  walls  like  missals  illumin- 
ated with  the  religion  of  time — and  then  remember 
those  gardens  that  were  indeed  beautiful  as  skill 
and  taste  and  money  could  make  them  far  away  in 
Illinois.  There  was  only  one  presence  you  missed 
in  that  Illinois  garden — the  mysteriously  beautiful 
presence  of  Time.  For,  even  in  Illinois,  Time  is  a 
gardener  no  money  can  buy,  a  subtle  yet  simple 
architect,  too  deliberate  in  his  lazy  sententious  skill 
to  hurry  himself  for  the  highest  wage. 

And  the  charm  she  finds  in  her  old  Buckingham- 
shire garden  is  symbolic  of  all  that  her  marriage 
with  "a  title"  brings  her.  Please  remember,  dear 
reader,  that  I  am  not  in  the  least  depreciating  the 
value — indeed,  in  my  poor  opinion,  the  higher  value 
— of  that  so-called  "simple"  happiness  which  neither 
riches  nor  titles  can  buy.  I  sincerely  believe  in  love 
in  a  cottage — for  some  people,  and  those  often  the 
wisest  and  the  best.  I  believe,  too,  in  all  simple 
unpurchasable  happiness.  Indeed,  what  else  is 
there  to  believe  in?  Money,  we  have  been  truth- 
fully told,  cannot  buy  the  things  best  worth  buying. 
It  cannot  buy,  for  instance,  the  goodness  of  women, 
[127] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

though  it  can  nearly  always  buy  their  beauty.  It 
cannot  buy  you  beautiful  children,  it  cannot  buy 
you  brains;  but  it  can  buy  you  a  beautiful  woman, 
a  beautiful  country  house,  a  beautiful  yacht,  beauti- 
ful horses,  and,  perhaps  best  of  all,  a  beautiful 
automobile.  And,  to  return  to  our  first  thought, 
it  can  buy  you  antiquity  and  distinction.  It  can 
buy  you  an  atmosphere  to  breathe  in,  aromatic  with 
fragrance  of  immemorial  refinement.  It  can  buy 
you  rooms  to  live  in  still  exquisite  with  the  breath 
of  beautiful  ladies  of  old  time;  rooms  still  echoing 
with  the  tread  of  strong  men  plotting  the  terrible 
beauty  of  history;  rooms  still  lovely  as  starlight 
with  the  soUtary  aspirations  of  dead  poets  and 
scholars;  and  ancient  oratories  sweet  as  cinnamon 
with  the  prayers  of  a  thousand  years.  A  new  country 
obviously  cannot  give  you  these  things.  If  you 
should  say  that  it  can  give  you  something  far  more 
important,  surely  I  should  not  dispute  the  point — 
for  values  are  so  relative,  and  a  dead  language,  so- 
called,  has  admonished  us  upon  the  futility  of  dis- 
putations on  matters  of  taste.  There  are  some  by 
no  means  tasteless  persons  whom  that  air  of  antiquity 
affects  Hke  the  heavy,  noxious  vapours  of  decay. 
To  live  in  an  old  house  or  an  old  city  is  to  them  like 
li\ang  in  a  tomb  perfumed  with  the  spices  of  the 
embalmers.  The  beauty,  say,  of  Venice  is  to  them 
beauty,  indeed;  but  it  is  the  beauty  of  a  marvellous 
f  128I 


THE  LOVABLENESS   OF  LORDS 

sepulchre.  They  love  to  live  in  young  cities,  much 
as  some  love  to  live  with  young  people,  for  the  sense 
of  vital  freshness  in  the  air,  the  brave  adventurous 
winds  blowing  up  out  of  the  future — not  those 
poisonous  exhalations  of  the  past.  In  New  York 
and  Chicago  they  seem  to  see  the  strong  young 
cities  of  the  future  rising  as  to  the  trumpets  of  the 
dawn.  About  such  cities  of  the  new  world  a  wind 
of  spring  is  blowing.  The  sound  of  the  hammers 
on  the  huge  towers  soaring  in  every  street  is  like 
the  singing  of  birds.  The  air  is  brisk  and  busy  with 
youth,  and  jubilant  with  its  martial  strength.  Here 
is  no  thought  of  death.  Even  the  cemeteries  are 
young,  and  the  gravestones  flash  in  the  morning  sun 
with  newly  gilded  names. 

Yet — strange  how  different  nature  has  made  us! — 
for  others  this  very  impetus  of  rejuvenescence  felt, 
as  we  have  been  saying,  by  some  in  the  smell  of 
mortar  freshly  laid,  is  only  to  be  had  in  those  old 
dead  cities  made  of  memories  and  sighs.  In  their 
very  antiquity  there  is  for  them  a  veritable  potency 
of  youth.  They  have,  I  suppose,  the  historic  sense, 
and  are  sensitive  to  the  energising  continuity  of 
history.  These  old  houses  and  cities  do  not  so 
much  speak  to  them  of  mortality  as  of  immortality. 
These  dusty  names  are  not  dusty  for  them;  they 
still  glitter  with  the  youth  of  immortal  achievement, 
and  their  stories  are  potent  with  the  elixir  of  emula- 
Q  [129] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

tion.     For  such,   antiquity  is  not  merely  dreamy 
with  meditation,  but  dynamic  with  ambition. 

But  perhaps  you  are  thinking  that  all  this  in 
regard  to  the  marriage  of  American  ladies  with 
English  lords  is  to  consider  too  curiously.  Seriously 
speaking,  I  think  not.  Of  course,  you  may  occa- 
sionally find  an  American  girl  of  wealth  who  marries 
a  lord  from  bourgeois  motives;  but  anyone  who 
would  maintain  that  the  American  girl  of  the  best 
type  marries  from  sheer  snobbery  knows,  I  venture 
to  say,  little  about  her — and  also  forgets  one  impor- 
tant fact  curiously  forgotten  by  critics  of  these  inter- 
national nuptials.  The  fact  I  refer  to  is  that  the 
American  girl's  "blood"  is  often  just  as  "good" 
as,  and  occasionally  better  than,  her  titled  husband's. 
It  has  often  struck  me  as  strange  that  the  world 
should  so  seldom  remember  that  America  was 
settled  by  some  of  the  very  best  blood  from  the  Old 
World,  and  that  the  best  American  pedigrees  go 
back  as  far  as  any  in  Europe,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  their  roots  are  there.  Indeed,  it  has  been  that 
principle  of  aristocratic  command  in  the  blood  that 
has  prevailed  to  drill  and  order  the  mass  of  pestilen- 
tial chaos  that  has  been,  and  to  some  extent  still 
is,  the  raw  material  of  modern  America.  With 
all  due  respect  to  it,  America  is  still  of  necessity 
a  factory,  "a  sounding  labour  house  vast  of  being." 
It  is  still  the  untamed  wilderness  of  industrialism, 

[130] 


THE  LOVABLENESS   OF  LORDS 

which  the  strong  men  are  engaged  in  subduing  with 
the  sweat  of  their  brows.  They  are  so  hard  at 
work  with  their  axes,  so  to  speak,  that  they  have 
no  time  for  the  elegancies  of  ancestry.  But  their 
beautiful  women  have — and  can  you  blame  them 
if,  amid  the  shriek  of  sawmills  and  the  fume  of  the 
stockyards,  a  homesickness  comes  over  them  for  those 
lands  across  the  sea,  the  dream  of  which  stirs  in 
them,  as  the  dream  of  Italy  stirs  in  the  Californian 
vine — a  homesickness  for  a  world  more  suited  to 
beautiful  women;  no  mere  frontier  world  of  progress, 
no  mere  world  in  the  making,  but  a  world  all  exquis- 
itely made,  a  world  that  has  time  to  think  of  flowers 
— and  is  such  an  engine  room  as  America  the  con- 
genial home  for  such  a  flower  as  the  American  girl  ? 
Europe,  on  the  other  hand — well,  it  has  time  for 
flowers.  It  is  by  no  means  without  its  engine 
houses,  but  they  are  so  well  established  that  they 
go  no  little  of  themselves,  and  leave  those  in  charge 
of  them  leisure  to  cultivate  their  gardens  and  to 
think  a  little  of  their  souls — and  a  lot  of  their  pleas- 
ures. A  lord  is  a  man  whom  nature  has  intrusted 
with  the  task  of  being  a  gentleman — that  is,  of 
being  the  noblest  work  of  God.  I  do  not,  of  course, 
say  that  it  is  necessary  to  be  a  lord  to  be  a  gentle- 
man— though  surely  no  man  can  be  a  lord  who  is 
not  a  gentleman.  Noblesse  oblige.  What  I  mean 
is  that  a  lord  is  a  man  born  with  the  necessity  of 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

being  nothing  else  but  a  gentleman;  a  man  who 
should,  and,  if  only  by  sheer  force  of  tradition, 
usually  does,  stand  for  the  chivalrous  virtues  and 
finer  arts  of  life.  The  cultivation  of  these  needs 
leisure.  Leisure  is  only  to  be  bought  by  money. 
Money  is  only  to  be  had  in  America.  So  it  comes 
about  that  English  lords  marry  American  ladies. 
Personally,  I  believe  that  they  would  marry  them, 
though  they  were  penniless.  I  know  that  I  would. 
But,  then,  alas !    I  was  not  born  a  lord. 


132] 


XI 
THE    WORLD  AND  THE  LOVER 

T^HE  whole  world  is  proverbially  said  to  love 
a  lover.  Like  most  proverbial  statements, 
this  one  is  exceedingly  open  to  question. 
In  fact,  all  the  evidence  seems  flatly  the  other  way. 
On  what  data,  one  wonders,  did  the  old  proverb- 
maker  base  his  dictum?  Surely  not  on  the  great 
love-stories.  The  world,  with  its  appetite  for 
vicarious  excitement,  likes  well  enough  to  watch 
the  tragic  spectacle  of  a  great  passion.  Incapable 
of  great  feelings  itself,  it  thrills  to  the  drama  of  them 
in  others.  It  even  applauds  their  lawlessness,  and 
canonises  their  audacity.  All  the  same,  it  will 
not  raise  a  finger  to  help  while  the  story  is  in  the 
making;  but,  on  the  contrary,  does  everything 
in  its  power  to  persecute  and  impede.  The  moment 
Romeo  and  JuHet  are  safely  dead  in  each  other's 
arms,  the  world  is  voluble  with  its  sympathy — 
but  not  till  it  is  quite  sure  that  its  sympathy  can  be 
of  no  possible  service  to  the  lovers.  While  sympathy 
would  be  of  some  use,  the  world — which  is  the  em- 
bodied cowardice  and  cant  of  humanity — stands 
firm  with  Montague  and  Capulct,  seniors.  If  the 
lovers  win,  well  and  good.     No  one  has  ever  denied 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

that  the  world  loves  success — though  it  has  always 
consistently  done  its  worst  to  prevent  it.  Yes, 
the  world  loves  successful  love,  as  it  fawns  on  any- 
thing that  has  conquered  it.  It  loves  also  pity  that 
costs  it  nothing.  But  that  it  loves  a  lover,  for  love 
of  love,  is  simply  not  true.  If  it  were  true,  there 
would  probably  have  been  no  love-stories,  for  the 
drama  of  love  has  mostly  come  of  the  conflict  between 
the  lovers  and  the  world.  They  had  to  count  the 
world  well  lost  to  win  each  other.  It  was  so  in  the 
days  of  Tristan  and  Isolde,  and  so  it  still  is  in  the 
days  of  Rudolph  of  Bavaria. 

What  the  world,  however,  does  thoroughly  appre- 
ciate is  the  exhibition  of  love  in  difficulties — love 
in  the  ribald  searchlight  of  the  divorce  court,  love 
shipwrecked,  love  running  the  gantlet  of  persecu- 
tion, love  befooled  and  betrayed  and  despoiled  of 
its  dream.  There  is  something  well  pleasing  to  the 
cynicism  of  the  world  in  all  this,  for  love  in  its  very 
nature,  in  its  contemptuous  idealism,  is  a  reproach, 
and  therefore  an  offence,  against  the  complacent 
materialism  of  the  world;  and,  naturally,  the  world 
rejoices  to  see  its  lofty  pretensions  in  the  dust. 
For  love  has  indeed  a  high-handed  way  with  it, 
an  aristocratic  insolence  of  bearing  toward  the 
plebeianism  of  use-and-wont,  and  the  world  is  ever 
on  the  watch  to  pay  it  out  for  its  transcendental 
airs.     As  the  course  of  true  love  never  did  run 

[134] 


THE   WORLD   AND  THE   LOVER 

smooth,  the  world  is  assured  of  perennial  enter- 
tainment. It  would,  indeed,  seem  to  be  in  love's 
very  nature  to  be  always  in  difficulties;  for,  as 
Hafiz  complains : 

.  .  .  this  strange  love  which  seemed  at  first,  alas! 
So  simple  and  so  innocent  a  thing. 
How  difficult,  how  difficult  it  is! 

Poor  love!  It  certainly  has  enough  troubles  of 
its  own  making  to  contend  with,  without  the  world 
besetting  its  path  with  external  obstacles.  It  seems 
bom  to  sorrow  as  the  sparks  fly  upward.  There 
is  always  something  the  matter,  and  the  love  that 
might  be  perfect  seldom  gets  its  chance. 

Not  only  the  world,  but  life  itself  seems  to  take 
a  mysterious  deHght  in  making  things  as  hard  as 
possible  for  this  gentle  passion,  that  means  so 
kindly  and  asks  only  to  be  left  in  peace.  There 
would  almost  seem,  for  example,  to  be  studied 
malignity  of  design,  rather  than  mere  accident,  in 
the  way  life  carefully  arranges  that  lovers  should 
always  meet  too  late  for  happiness.  With  pure 
devilishness.  Life  would  seem  to  say:  "Here  are  two 
people  absolutely  made  for  each  other.  They  have 
but  to  meet  at  the  right  moment,  under  favouring 
conditions,  to  be  completely  and  enduringly  happy. 
Therefore,  I  will  hide  them  from  each  other,  till 
such  time  as  they  have  become  hopelessly  involved 

[135] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

in  the  lives  of  others  entirely  unsuited  for  them, 
and  then,  when  they  are  irrevocably  pledged  to  a 
disastrous  destiny,  I  will  bring  about  their  meeting, 
and  watch  the  agonised  drama  that  results."  This 
is  the  formula  from  which  life  seldom  deviates,  and 
it  never  seems  to  weary  of  the  sardonic  tragi- 
comedy of  two  lovers  thus  trying  to  disentangle 
themselves  from  the  web  of  circumstance. 

This  syncopation,  which  prevails  elsewhere  and 
everywhere  in  the  stories  of  lovers,  seems  the  more 
designed  because  life,  when  it  wishes,  is  seen  to 
calculate  its  times  and  seasons  with  such  precision, 
and  bring  about  other  meetings  and  matings  with 
such  inspired  promptitude.  Consider  the  exquisite 
punctuaUty  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  The  conjunc- 
tions of  the  planets  are  timed  to  the  fraction  of  a 
second,  and,  after  journeyings  a  century  long,  they 
come  gliding  in  their  appalling  orbits  straight  to  the 
sidereal  rendezvous.  And  elsewhere  in  nature  we 
see  the  same  careful  ordering  of  dependent  corre- 
spondences. The  bee  is  not  abroad  before  the 
coming  of  the  flowers,  nor  is  the  butterfly  sent  forth 
to  meet  the  snow;  neither  is  the  tiniest  nursling 
of  the  earth  awakened  into  life,  before  nature  has 
prepared  for  its  appointed  welcome.  In  all  her 
other  pairings  nature  is  seen  to  be  anxiously  exact 
— only  with  man  and  woman,  it  would  seem,  is 
she  so  mysteriously  perverse. 
[136] 


THE   WORLD   AND   THE   LOVER 

And  this  bitter  wrong  which  Life  thus  docs  to 
Love  is  one  which  even  Life  itself  is  powerless  to 
right.  Sometimes,  with  ironic  kindness,  Life  will 
seem  to  offer  Love  a  late  opportunity  of  correcting 
that  old  mistake.  Some  years  after  their  first  hope- 
less meeting  she  will  make  the  way  apparently 
smooth  for  them;  loose  them,  by  change  and  chance, 
from  those  dividing  bonds,  and  say,  "Now,  take 
each  other."  But  alas!  it  is  too  late.  They  are 
no  longer  the  same  people.  The  years  have  had 
their  way  with  them.  They  are  to  each  other  but 
sacred  memories,  ghosts  of  Might-have-been. 

No  diver  brings  up  love  again. 
Dropped  once,  my  beautiful  Felise, 
In  such  cold  seas. 

One  perhaps  hardly  realises  the  important  part 
played  in  these  heart-tragedies  by — the  moment, 
the  moment  that  can  never  come  again.  We  are 
apt  to  assume  that,  so  long  as  the  two  chief  actors 
remain  alive,  it  is  in  their  power,  under  favouring 
circumstances,  to  take  up  their  lives  together  at 
the  point  where  they  parted.  But,  so  soon  as  they 
attempt  to  do  this,  it  is  borne  tragically  in  upon  them 
that  there  was  a  third  actor  equally  important  with 
themselves  present  at  the  time  of  their  first  fateful 
meeting  and  choosing  of  each  other,  an  actor  impos- 
sible to  recall  or  to  substitute.  That  actor  was — 
the  moment.     Or,  to  change  the  simile,  the  moment 

[137] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

was  like  that  perilously  sensitive  harmony  of  con- 
ditions which  the  old  alchemists  called  the  moment 
of  projection,  the  moment  when  the  elements  in 
the  crucible  are  tremulously  eager  to  combine, 
when  every  influence  has  been  adjusted  with  unerring 
calculation,  when  the  planets  are  shining  in  that 
magical  aspect  for  which  the  alchemist  may  watch 
in  vain  all  the  rest  of  his  life,  the  tense  moment 
before  the  diverse  elements  leap  into  union  and 
turn  to — gold. 

So  it  was,  almost  exactly,  with  our  two  lovers. 
Had  the  moment  been  allowed  to  have  its  way  with 
them,  they  would  have  become  one  indivisible  hap- 
piness, growing  more  perfectly  in  harmony  with 
the  passage  of  time,  subject  to  the  same  influences 
and  undergoing  the  same  changes  so  subtly  together 
as  to  appear  unchanged.  But  the  moment  of 
union  gone  by,  left  separate  in  the  world,  two 
divided  entities  individually  subject  to  different 
influences — though  their  love,  say,  of  year  1900  may 
remain  alive,  they  find,  on  meeting  again  in  1906, 
that  that  love  is  somehow  not  in  harmony  with 
their  changed  and  developed  selves.  It  needs,  so 
to  say,  to  be  brought  up  to  date,  and  they  realise, 
with  sad  hearts,  that  that  cannot  be  done.  The 
two  people  who  loved  each  other  in  1900  have  passed 
into  dreamland.  There  they  still  love  each  other. 
But  the  two  people  who  bear  their  names,  and  still 
[138] 


THE   WORLD  AND  THE  LOVER 

look  like  them  in  1906,  are  not  the  same,  and  can 
never  be  the  same  again.  It  is  just  possible  that 
their  up-to-date  embodiments  may  fall  in  love  on 
their  own  account,  on  a  1906  basis,  but  I  doubt  if 
this  has  ever  happened.     No  "gone  is  gone " 

Look  in  my  face;  my  name  is  Might-have-been; 
I  am  also  called  No-more,  Too-late,  Farewell. 

Though,  as  we  have  remarked,  the  world,  so 
strangely  said  to  love  a  lover,  does  everything  in  its 
power  to  make  the  course  of  true  love  run  as  rough 
as  possible,  it  is  the  severest  critic  of  any  attempt 
on  the  part  of  love  to  make  it  smooth.  Let  two 
unhappy  people  attempt  to  remould  the  "sorry 
scheme"  of  their  matrimonial  purgatory  "nearer 
to  the  heart's  desire,"  and  the  world  is  at  once  after 
them  with  its  censorious  hypocrisy.  It  was,  more 
than  likely,  the  world's  fault  to  start  with,  but  that 
makes  no  difference.  The  situation,  too,  is  prob- 
ably one  of  delicate  complexity,  the  rights  and 
wrongs  of  it  so  equally  divided  and  so  inextricably 
tangled,  and  the  whole  dilemma  so  intimately  per- 
sonal to  the  two  involved,  that  it  is  impossible  for 
a  third  person  to  get  at  the  evidence,  not  to  speak 
of  passing  judgment.  The  world,  however,  takes 
no  account  of  such  nice  considerations,  but,  with 
ignorant  impudence,  presumes  to  decide  and  con- 
demn.   As  the  world  is  too  coarsely  organised  to 

[  139] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

know  anything  about  the  finer  manifestations  of 
the  mystery  that  is  love,  it  is  necessarily  insensitive 
to  any  of  its  more  refined  difficulties.  The  divorce- 
court  differences  of  those  who  love  crudely  it  can 
understand,  but  the  painful  spiritual  incompatibili- 
ties of  finer  natures  are  so  much  Greek  to  it.  For 
the  loves  of  butchers  and  book-makers  it  is  a  com- 
petent tribunal,  but  the  love  difficulties  of  more 
highly  organised  individuals  are  not  to  be  solved  by 
the  meat -axe  of  the  law. 

The  pity  of  it  is  that  the  very  fineness  of  such 
natures  increases  their  suffering  and  further  com- 
plicates complexity.  For  simple  violent  natures 
there  are  remedies  equally  simple  and  violent. 
Love,  maybe,  has  turned  to  hate,  according  to  the 
ancient  melodramatic  formula,  and  there  the  issue 
is  simple,  and  the  trouble  soon  disposed  of.  But, 
with  the  finer  natures,  love's  difficulties  are  seldom 
so  clean-cut  as  that.  Two  who  have  once  loved 
may  be  aware  that  their  love  is  dead,  yet  so  much 
old  kindness  survives  that  they  shrink  from  hurting 
each  other,  will  indeed  suffer  keenly  in  secret  rather 
than  betray  the  lonely  truth.  One  does  not  envy 
the  nature  that  can  coldly  say  to  another  in  whom 
love  is  still  alive :  "  My  love  is  dead  " ;  and  yet  there 
will  be  many  to  argue  that  this  executioner's  way 
is  best.  To  others  it  will  seem  too  much  like  plain 
murder.     Better  surely  to  suffer  the  pains  of  hell 

I  140] 


THE  WORLD   AND  THE  LOVER 

in  silence  than  thus  to  smite  with  clenched  fist  the 
appeaHng  face  of  love.  Even  though,  sooner  or 
later,  the  truth  must  out,  surely  it  is  the  better  way 
to  mitigate  its  revelation  all  we  can.  In  this  matter, 
however,  woman  is  permitted  to  be  more  summary 
than  man;  and  the  reason  is,  perhaps,  not  far  to 
seek.  Consider  the  airy  way  in  which  a  woman 
will  break  off  an  engagement,  with  little  more  con- 
cern than  if  she  were  dismissing  a  servant.  But 
a  man  must  keep  his,  though  he  may  have  come  to 
see  with  clear  eyes  that  to  do  so  means  certain 
unhappiness  on  both  sides. 

Has  it  not  happened  to  many  a  man  to  drift  into 
an  engagement  with  some  charming  girl,  who,  he 
is  obscurely  conscious,  in  spite  of  his  genuine  affec- 
tion for  her,  is  not  somehow  the  wife  he  had  been 
expecting  some  day  to  marry?  He  is  dimly  aware 
of  a  misgiving  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart  that  she  is 
not  the  wife  life  has  chosen  for  liim.  Life  whispers 
him  to  "wait,"  giving  him  one  of  those  warnings 
which  at  important  moments  Life  often  does  give  us 
through  our  instincts,  but  which  too  often  we  allow 
our  reason  to  overrule.  "Wait,"  Life  keeps  saying, 
"your  woman  of  destiny  is  already  on  her  way 
towards  you.  At  any  moment  she  may  turn  the 
corner  of  the  street,  and  you  may  meet  her  face  to 
face.  Wait,  O  wait!"  But  he  pays  no  heed  to 
the  warning,  and,  suddenly,  when  he  is  inexorably 

h4i] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

pledged,  perhaps  but  a  short  week  before  his 
marriage  day — the  dream-woman  turns  the  corner 
of  the  street!    And  it  is  too  late. 

Had  the  cases  been  reversed,  his  betrothed,  with- 
out a  moment's  hesitation,  would  have  dismissed 
him  into  outer  darkness  with  half-a-sheet  of  note- 
paper,  and  left  him  to  get  over  it  as  best  he  could. 
But  he,  being  a  man,  must  act  a  man's  part,  and, 
unknown  to  her,  lay  as  a  sacrifice  upon  the  altar 
of  their  wedding  the  whole  joy  and  meaning  of  his 
life.  Or,  if  he  conceives  it  his  duty  to  tell  her  of 
his  changed  feeling,  she  will  probably  break  down 
so  piteously,  with  hints  at  suicide,  that  he  feels 
himself  an  utter  scoundrel;  tenderness  wells  up  in 
him,  perilously  like  love,  and  the  marriage  takes 
place,  after  all. 

It  may  happen  that  such  a  marriage  proves 
successful,  but  the  probability  is  that,  human  nature, 
even  with  the  best  intentions,  remaining  human 
nature,  it  will  sooner  or  later  come  to  grief.  In 
spite  of  faithful  efforts  to  lay  it,  the  ghost  of  that 
old  dream  will  haunt  the  heart  of  the  man,  and 
will  some  day  glide,  visible  to  both,  between  the 
unhappy  husband  and  wife.  Nor  will  the  appari- 
tion long  remain  invisible  to  the  sharp  eyes  of  the 
world. 

Then  shall  the  man  hear  how  thankless  a  thing 
it  is  that  he  has  tried  to  do.  If,  in  extenuation  of 
I  142] 


THE   WORLD   AND  THE  LOVER 

liis  failure  to  make  happy  the  woman  he  did  not 
love,  it  be  urged  that  he  has  sacrificed  the  woman 
he  did  love  and  his  own  heart  in  the  unsuccessful 
attempt,  he  will  learn  that  he  did  a  cruel  wrong 
to  his  wife  to  marry  her  under  such  circumstances, 
that  the  manly  thing  for  him  to  have  done  was 
to  have  broken  his  engagement!  Probably  some- 
one will  quote: 

For  each  man  kills  the  thing  he  loves, 

By  each  let  this  be  heard, 
Some  do  it  with  a  bitter  jest, 

Some  with  a  flattering  word; 
The  coward  does  it  with  a  kiss. 

The  brave  man  with  a  sword. 

Yet,  had  he  used  the  sword,  who  needs  be  told 
what  would  have  been  said  of  him  then?  He 
was  placed  in  one  of  the  cruellest  dilemmas  which 
a  man  can  be  called  to  face.  Sacrificing  his  own 
joy,  he  has  honestly  done  his  best.  But  the  world, 
which  is  incapable  even  of  conceiving  the  sacrifice 
he  made,  regards  only  his  failure  in  a  noble  struggle, 
and  condemns  him  accordingly. 

Love's  tragedies  are  usually  three-cornered,  and 
no  less  often  it  is  the  woman,  who,  by  the  force  of 
those  circumstances  which  press  so  peculiarly  hard 
on  women,  has  drifted  into  a  loveless  marriage,  to 
meet  too  late  "the  love  which  moves  the  sun  and 
stars."     No  one  needs  be  told  how  much  sympathy 

[143] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

she  may  expect  from  the  world  in  her  cruel  situation; 
for  the  world,  that  likes  nothing  so  well  as  to  oppress 
the  weak  and  to  kill  its  wounded,  is  strangely  pitiless 
to  an  unhappy  woman  who  would  fain  be  happy. 
For  a  woman  that  remoulding  nearer  to  the  heart's 
desire  is  a  desperate  step  indeed. 

There  is  one  important  truth  about  love  which 
love's  critics  never  seem  to  take  into  account — the 
fact  that  love  is  an  irresistible  natural  force,  and 
that  falling  in  love  is  not  a  matter  of  the  volition. 
The  coming  of  a  great  love  is  as  unforeseen  and  as 
unescapable  as  the  day  of  one's  death.  The  world 
treats  falling  in  love  as  though  it  were  a  wilful  self- 
indulgence,  whereas  the  victims  of  that  "lord  of 
terrible  aspect"  know  too  well  how  helpless  they  are 
in  the  throes  of  a  passion  that  fell  upon  them  with 
supernatural  suddenness,  like  lightning  out  of  a 
clear  sky. 

There  is  always  a  strange  terror  mingled  with 
the  joy  of  love's  coming,  and  those  who  know  love 
best,  rather  than  seek  it,  would  often,  like  the  hero 
of  Tennyson's  "Maud,"  fiee  from  its  cruel  madness. 
For  love  seldom  comes  without  bringing  sorrow 
to  someone:  "Alas!"  as  an  old  dramatist  says, 
"that  nothing  can  win  dear  love  but  loss  of  dear 
love."  One  man  must  lose  the  face  another  wins; 
one  woman's  heart  break  that  another's  may  be 
in  heaven.     And  in  this  for  all  gentle  hearts  that 

[  144] 


THE   WORLD   AND   THE   LOVER 

love  there  is  great  sorrow,  and  they  would  often 
willingly  give  up  their  own  happiness  rather  than 
that  another  should  suffer  for  their  sake.  But  alas! 
it  is  of  no  avail.  Tenderness  we  can  command, 
but  love  is  not  in  our  power  to  feign;  and,  though  pity 
be  akin  to  love,  who  would  accept  it  in  exchange? 
It  is  such  finer  difficulties  of  love  of  which  the  world 
knows  nothing,  and,  indeed,  the  love  that  the 
world  does  understand  needs  some  other  name. 

The  whole  world  loves  a  lover!  On  the  contrary, 
the  world  and  love  are  natural  enemies,  and  the 
kingdom  of  love  is  not  here. 


145] 


XII 

ON   AIRSHIPS    AND    THE    SOUL 

OF  MAN 

THE  world  is  now  confidently  looking  for- 
ward to  the  imminent  era  of  the  airship, 
with  the  eager  impatience  of  a  child  for  its 
new  toy.  The  toy  is  almost  ready.  That  it  is 
coming  there  is  now,  obviously,  no  doubt  at  all. 
A  few  more  experiments,  a  few  more  improvements, 
and  it  will  be  there  on  sale  in  the  toy  shop  for  any- 
body to  buy,  like  the  latest  pattern  of  automobile. 

How  wonderful  it  will  be  to  fly !  No  doubt  it  will 
be  a  very  exciting,  even  an  inspiring,  and  possibly 
an  exquisite,  experience.  Such  purely  liquid  speed 
will  undoubtedly  be  a  new  form  of  ecstasy.  It 
will  come  very  near  to  disembodied  motion — this 
jarless,  subtle  gliding  through  space,  this  silken 
rapidity  of  ethereal  passage.  Moreover,  as  an 
observation  car  of  boundless  prospects,  the  airship 
will  provide  the  Cook's  tourist  of  the  sky  with 
many  novel  gasps  and  thrills. 

But  it  is  not  my  purpose  here  to  dilate  on  what 
the   airship   will    bring   us — to   my  thinking,  com- 
paratively little.     That  has  long  been  in  able  and 
(146] 


ON   AIRSHIPS  AND  THE  SOUL 

enthusiastic  hands;  mine  the  solitary  purpose  vainly 
to  point  out  and  fruitlessly  to  lament  what  it  must 
all  too  surely  take  away. 

Certain  other  philosophers  have  their  apprehen- 
sions. They  dread  its  military  developments;  they 
foresee  its  criminal  adaptability.  But,  so  far  as  I 
have  seen,  no  one  seems  to  have  realised,  or,  at  all 
events,  minded,  that  the  airship  means  not  the 
gain,  but  the  irretrievable  loss  of  the  sky — the 
trivial  physical  conquest,  indeed,  but  the  tragical 
spiritual  loss! 

In  the  few  years  that  remain  before  aviation  is  an 
accomplished  commonplace  of  our  lives,  man  is 
literally  looking  his  last  on  the  sky.  All  too  soon  it 
will  be  impossible,  even  for  a  rich  man,  to  enjoy 
the  peace  which  is  mine  this  afternoon,  as  in  the 
heart  of  an  old  wood  I  lie  upon  the  fern  and  con- 
template the  mystery  of  the  boundless  sky.  Soon 
that  flawless  Infinite  will  be  feverishly  alive  to  ear 
and  eye  with  all  the  temporal  traffic  of  the  world, 
all  the  turmoil  and  vulgarity  of  any  other  earthly 
thoroughfare.  Solitude  will  be  utterly  and  forever 
destroyed,  and  wearied  town-tired  folk,  that  had 
been  wont  to  flee  into  the  country  to  rest  their  eyes 
and  feed  their  nerves  on  trancjuil  spaces,  may  as 
well  remain  in  the  city,  and  will  least  of  all  turn  their 
eyes  on  the  sky,  which  will  then  be  as  suggestive 
of  peace  as  Broadway  at  noontide. 

[H7] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

There  have  been  many  outcries,  from  Ruskin  on, 
against  the  vandaHsm  of  modern  machinery.  Such 
have  seemed  to  me  mainly  sentimental,  for  the 
damage  done  to  nature  here  and  there  by  railway 
or  power-house  has  been  purely  local  or  infinitesimal, 
by  comparison  with  its  boundless  beauty.  If  here 
or  there  a  railroad  mars  the  landscape  or  a  power 
house  depletes  a  waterfall,  the  world  is  inexhaustibly 
supplied   with   land:*:apes   and   picturesque   rivers. 

All  such  forms  of  mechanical  speed  are  lost  to 
sight  and  sound  in  the  great  tree-clad  silence  of 
the  earth.  Even  the  vulgarest  automobile  party, 
breaking  the  country  stillness,  makes  but  a  momen- 
tary intrusion  and  is  gone  with  a  turn  in  the  road. 
The  ugliest  line  of  freight  cars  is  swallowed  up  in 
some  umbrageous  woodland.  All  such  vehicular 
necessities — and  nuisances — ^make  but  compara- 
tively insignificant  currents  and  ripples  upon  the 
face  of  nature;  but  from  the  airship,  it  is  easy  to 
see,  there  will  be  no  possibility  of  escape,  no  cessation 
of  its  visible  intrusion  everywhere  and  at  all  times 
on  the  tormented  eyesight  of  man. 

It  will  strike  the  greatest  blow  to  beauty,  in  the 
deepest  as  well  as  the  surface  meaning  of  the  word, 
that  has  ever  been  struck  on  this  planet.  The 
persecutions  of  beauty  have  been  many,  in  their 
nature,  but  they  have  been  spasmodic,  passing 
historic  manifestations  of  vandalism  or  eclipses  of 
[148] 


ON   AIRSHIPS   AND  THE   SOUL 

the  human  spirit ;  but  here  is  a  hostile  new  condition 
of  things,  organic  in  nature  itself,  literally  as  all- 
embracing  as  the  sky,  from  which  there  is  no  escape. 

This  is  not  a  jeremiad  merely  in  the  interest  of 
artists  or  poetical  persons,  yet  it  would  be  idle' 
to  deny  what  a  calamity  the  airship  will  be  to  the 
painter.  No  one  will  ever  be  able  to  paint  again  the 
solemn  glory  of  the  sunset  or  the  enchanted  loneli- 
ness of  the  morning  sky.  Athwart  the  delicate 
heavens  will  come  a  grimy  train  of  Standard  Oil 
freight  ships,  or  some  noisy  supper  party  will  go  by, 
blowing  horns  and  singing  music-hall  ditties.  Indeed, 
pictures  of  the  sky  before  the  day  of  airships  will 
become  rare  and  curious  things,  to  be  looked  on 
with  wonder,  and  enterprising  painters  might  do 
worse  than  lay  in  a  stock  of  pictures  against  the 
evil  day.  They  will  surely  be  of  great  value  in  the 
course  of  a  very  few  years. 

Of  course,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  airship  will 
have  its  own  pictorial  possibilities,  too  ;  possibilities 
which  no  doubt  will  result  in  some  delightfully 
bizarre  art,  as  the  barges  and  warehouses  of  the 
Thames  turned  to  favour  and  to  prettiness  under 
the  magic  of  Whistler;  but  such  whimsical  sectional 
art  will  hardly  compensate  us  for  the  loss  of  the 
more  central  cosmic  art  of  the  sky,  hardly  console 
us  for  the  loss  of  the  silver  mystery  of  the  rising  moon. 

No,  night  and  day,  the  sky  will  be  a  sky  no  longer, 

[  149] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

but  one  vast  and  vulgar  sky  sign,  which,  instead  of 
calming,  will  reflect  and  immeasurably  increase  the 
fever  and  fret  of  humanity. 

All  outdoor  privacy  will  cease;  for  the  most 
secluded  woodland,  the  most  untrodden  wilderness, 
will  be  open  to  invasion  at  any  moment.  Gardens 
will  lose  half  their  charm.  We  shall  have  to  roof 
them  in.  Noble  parks  will  cease  to  be  desirable 
possessions.  Mountains  will  be  the  least  solitary 
of  all  places — and  in  those  days,  indeed,  no  one 
will  dream  of  going  up  into  a  mountain  to  pray. 
For  all  such  meditative  purposes  man  will  have 
to  descend  into  the  bowels  of  the  earth;  and  fan- 
tastic excavation — life  a  la  Monte  Cristo — will,  no 
doubt,  become  the  fashion  for  rich  persons.  Under- 
ground pleasure  gardens,  after  the  manner  of  the 
Arabian  Nights,  will  be  one  of  the  refuges  of  per- 
secuted man.  For  we  shall  all  be  at  the  mercy 
of  the  vulgar  hoodlumism  of  the  world  to  an  extent 
we  can  hardly  conceive  of  now.  At  present  we  can 
escape  from  the  vulgar  impertinent  or  the  moneyed 
roisterer,  but  then  there  will  be  no  refuge — except 
indoors  or  underground.  The  spectacle  of  vulgar 
wealth  in  all  its  vociferous  parade  will  be  ever  before 
us,  and  money  will  become  literally  the  prince  of  the 
powers  of  the  air. 

Whatever  gains  there  may  be  to  man  in  aviation — 
and  the  gains  are  obvious;  I  have  already  hinted  at 
[150] 


ON   AIRSHIPS   AND    THE   SOUL 

them — they  cannot,  it  seems  to  me,  compensate 
him  for  the  tragic,  irretrievable,  spiritual  loss  which 
will  ensue  from  his  achievement  at  last  of  the  old 
disastrous  ambition  of  Icarus. 

The  airship  will  give  us  greater  rapidity  of  trans- 
portation, greater  facilities  for  diabolic  warfare, 
and  a  new  speed  excitement  for  nerves  that  live 
on  speed.  Undeniably  it  will  be  a  wonderful  new 
exhilaration — for  a  short  while — to  a  jaded,  feverish 
world.  But  when  the  novelty  has  died  down,  and 
to  circle  round  the  Flatiron  Building  is  no  longer 
more  exciting  than  spinning  a  top  or  rolling  a  hoop, 
I  think  that  man,  with  a  great  and  vain  regret,  will 
awaken  to  what  he  has  lost  by  his  wonderful  new 
toy. 

All  the  old  peace  and  prayer  of  the  world  will 
have  gone.  The  air,  once  so  pure  and  tranquil, 
will  be  filled  with  the  sound  of  gongs,  the  flash  of 
signals  and  undreamed-of  forms  of  noise  and  colour. 
Man  will  have  placed  a  cloud  of  gigantic  gnats 
between  him  and  the  Infinite;  and,  howsoever  high 
he  may  ascend  in  the  swiftest  airship,  never  will  he 
find  again  the  same  sky  that  blessed  him  with  its 
blue  peace,  its  beautiful  old  dreams  of  better  worlds 
and  fantastic  fairy  isles  and  seas,  and  laid  the  con- 
soHng  hand  of  the  Eternal  upon  his  troubled  human* 
heart.  For  him  the  moon  no  more  shall  rise  among 
the  quiet  trees,  and  the  morning  star  will  be  sur- 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

rounded  by — excursionists.  All  such  ancient  inspir- 
ations and  consolations  of  man  will  be  gone.  Where 
now  will  be  the  sweet  influences  of  the  Pleiades? 
And  no  more  even  may  he  lie  down  in  the  green 
pastures  or  walk  beside  the  still  waters.  He  will 
have  lost  both  heaven  and  earth.  He  will,  so  to 
speak,  have  come  astronomically  nearer  to  the  stars 
— as  though  he  had  been  pushed  up  a  little  nearer, 
through  a  telescope — but  astronomy  is  not  the  stars. 
He  will  have  become  acquainted  with  awful  azure 
gulfs  of  space,  millions  of  miles  of  nothing,  with 
dizzy  heights  of  boundless,  but  somewhat  similar, 
ether;  but  he  will  have  lost  what  I  might  call  a  certain 
old  familiarity  betwixt  sky  and  earth,  which  makes 
the  sun  seem  nearer  and  closer  to  us,  as  it  opens  the 
eyes  of  the  flowers,  and  sets  the  birds  singing,  and 
fills  the  woodland  with  ascending  spices,  and  tans 
us  in  long,  happy,  summer  days,  and  then  sets,  with 
such  mysterious  promise  of  immortal  glory  to 
mortal  hearts,  behind  the  widowed  world. 

The  naked  sun  and  the  naked  moon  are  tiresome 
heavenly  bodies.  They  owe  their  real  attraction 
for  us  to  the  earth,  which  clothes  their  beams  in 
various  raiment  of  morning  mist  and  romantic 
cloud — the  pomp  and  luxury  and  tenderness  of 
clouds;  the  airy  veils  of  rainbowed  vapours.  Or 
they  must  alternately  hide  and  reveal  and  diffuse 
themselves  through  the  secrecies  of  ancient  trees. 


ON   AIRSHIPS  AND  THE   SOUL 

Heaven,  and  even  the  heavens,  arc  largely  a  creation 
of  earth.  I  am  much  afraid  the  airship  is  going 
to  lose  us  both. 

But  of  course  all  this  will  sound  old-fashioned 
to  the  pathetic  speed  fiends  of  the  modern  world, 
the  nervous  children  of  an  overstrung  and  murder- 
ously driven  civilisation,  whose  illusion  is  that  to 
go  fast  is  to  go  far.  These,  and  such  speed  fiends 
of  so-called  modern  progress,  arc  losing  and  destroy- 
ing much  for  us  of  "the  old  perfections  of  the  earth" 
— to  quote  a  beautiful  phrase  of  Lord  De  Tabley — 
and  they  are  giving  us  nothing  but  the  dust  and  ashes 
of  excitement  in  exchange. 

They  have  already  lost  us  the  real  Japan;  some 
day  they  may  even  lose  us  the  real  England- 
homes  of  ancient  beauty,  ancient  strength,  and 
ancient  distinction.  Odd  as  it  may  sound,  electricity 
is  no  substitute  for  religion  and  those  beautiful  old 
forms  of  piety  that  tend  the  altar  and  tend  the  sick 
and  tend  the  flowers  alike,  with  a  sense  that  this 
strange  old  world  is  a  very  sacred  place,  and  mys- 
teriously in  the  hands  of  God. 

Now  these  speed  fiends  of  civilisation  are  about 
to  rob  us  of  the  sky.  They  are  about  to  commercial- 
ise, belligerise,  and  even  vulgarise  the  sky.  We 
can  but  hope  that  the  eternal  compensatory  law 
of  things  will  make  some  amends  to  the  soul  of  man 
for  this  tragic  loss. 

[153] 


XIII 

THE   WORD    BUSINESS 

THERE  are  times  when  a  man  who  sells 
words  for  his  living,  bringing  words  to 
market  as  other  men  bring  the  visible 
ponderable  work  of  their  hands,  is  inclined  to 
quarrel  with  his  business,  and  throw  down  his  pen, 
with  a  sigh  that  he  is  not  as  other  men  are — soldier, 
sailor,  or  even  a  good  honest  tinker.  Compared 
with  the  brawny  muscular  occupations  of  his  fellows 
— such  as  lawyers  and  stock-brokers — his  work  takes 
on  a  certain  humiliated  air  of  unreality.  Other 
men  are  dealing  with  things:  his  business  is  with 
the  shadows  of  things — "a  shadow  handhng  all 
things  as  shadows."  Properly  speaking,  he  does 
not  live  at  all.  He  is  merely  the  scrivener  of  life, 
and  he  longs  sometimes  to  turn  his  pen  into  a  sword 
— or  even  a  ploughshare.  He  seems  to  get  a  glimpse 
into  the  reason  why  the  world,  ungratefully  enough, 
has  always  regarded  players  and  minstrel  folk  with 
a  certain  contempt — as  of  the  battle-axe  for  the  lute. 
He  too  is  merely  an  "entertainer" — sitting  there 
arranging  his  little  black  tesserae  upon  the  page. 
Perhaps,  if  his  mood  of  discontent  is  very  blue,  he — 
[154] 


THE   WORD   BUSINESS 


still  the  helpless  victim  of  words,  even  in  this  moment 
of  revolt  against  them — may  improvise  after  some 
such  fashion  as  this: 

Tragic  the  fate  of  the  man  who  worships  the  image  of 

things, 
Instead    of   doing   some   work — paints,    or   fiddles,    or 

sings; 
I   all   my  life   have  followed   the   bubble  of  beautiful 

sight: 
The  bubble  has  burst,  and  my  heart  is  black  and  bitter 

and — night. 

Stevenson,  it  will  be  remembered,  once  had  a  bad 
attack  of  these  literary  blues,  and  blasphemed  his 
craft  in  a  highly  moral  vein.  Of  course,  it  is  all 
nonsense.  The  man  who  was  born  to  write  would 
never  be  happy  doing  any  other  work  but  his  own. 
Still,  the  mood  is  real  while  it  lasts,  and  at  the  back 
of  it  there  is  a  certain  truth  which  there  is  no  denying 
— and  it  is  the  realisation  of  that  truth  which  thus 
occasionally  saddens  the  children  of  the  pen.  It 
is  not  strictly  the  unreality  of  his  work  that  haunts 
the  writer,  but — the  unreality  of  himself. 

Far  from  being  unreal,  it  would  not  be  difficult 
to  prove  that  literature  is  about  the  realest  thing  in 
the  world:  real  by  the  inexhaustible  potency  of  its 
influence  upon  life,  and  real  by  the  durable  nature 
of  its  media.  Is  there  anything  more  indestructible 
than  a  line   of  Shakespeare,  more   livingly  lasting? 

[155] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

Compared  with  it — with  all  its  stored  elixir  vilce 
— the  pyramids  are  pointlessly,  foolishly  immortal. 
No,  the  book  is  real  enough;  it  is  the  writer  who 
is  curiously,  even  tragically,  unreal;  and  he  is  more 
unreal  than  any  other  artist,  because  the  material 
of  his  art,  the  stuff  his  dreams  are  made  of,  is  the 
absolute  whole  of  life,  thought  as  well  as  deed, 
the  centre  no  less  than  the  surface  of  existence — 
everything  conceivable  existing  for  the  mind  as  well 
as  for  the  eye,  all  emotions  the  most  intimate,  his 
own  soul  and  the  soul  of  every  one  else:  there  is 
nothing  in  human  experience  which  is  not  to  him 
material,  nothing  that  remains  personal,  nothing 
left,  so  to  say,  for  his  real  life.  For  illustration: 
However  much  in  life  a  painter  may  be  able  to  paint, 
there  must  always  remain  a  vast  realm  of  experience 
which  is  beyond  the  scope  of  his  art,  and  which  his 
brush  cannot  therefore  dehumanise.  Owing  to  the 
limitations  of  his  art,  there  is  much  of  life  which 
he  is  unable  to  possess  as  a  painter,  a  large  residuum 
of  human  material  left  over  from  his  art,  his  relation 
to  which,  therefore,  is  that  of  an  average,  a  normal, 
human  being.  In  short,  his  art  admits  of  his  being 
an  average  human  being,  a  citizen,  a  father,  as  well 
as  an  artist.  With  the  writer,  however,  this  is  not 
so;  for  in  his  case  there  is  nothing  of  life  left  over 
for  the  man  by  the  artist — because  the  art  of  the 
writer  absorbs  the  absolute  whole  of  life.     Nothing 

[156] 


THE   WORD   BUSINESS 


can  happen  to  the  writer  merely  as  a  private  individ- 
ual. His  most  personal  joys  and  sorrows,  his  most 
intimate  experience  of  every  kind,  is,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  material  for  his  art.  Nothing  re- 
mains, as  we  say,  for  his  own  life.  He  has  no  life 
of  his  own.  Everything  that  happens  to  him  hap- 
pens not,  so  to  say,  for  himself,  but  for  his  art — 
and  from  this  devouring  comprehensiveness  of  his 
art  there  is  for  him  no  escape. 

He  dreams  that  he  is  a  lover, — and  indeed  he 
experiences  all  the  heights  and  depths  of  love's 
joy  and  sorrow,  with  an  intensity  of  which  real  lovers 
seem  hardly  capable.  Yet,  when  he  comes  out  of 
the  dream,  he  sees  that  he  has  not  been  a  real  lover, 
after  all,  but  that  he  has  been  allowed  to  see  and 
feel  in  a  vision  all  the  emotions  of  love  merely  in  his 
capacity  as  an  artist.  His  business  with  the  reaUty 
is  only  so  long  as  it  is  necessary  for  him  to  learn  it 
for  use  in  his  art.  He  has  come  out  of  his  love- 
dream  with  a  handful  of  songs — which  the  real 
lovers  will  say  over  and  over  to  each  other  with 
breaking  hearts,  but  which  he  will  forget.  That 
was  the  purpose  of  the  destiny  that  is  over  him. 
He  did  not  fall  in  love  for  himself,  though  he  him- 
self deemed  it  so — unconsciously  he  was  but  doing 
the  bidding  of  his  imperious  muse. 

And  so  it  is  for  him  with  the  whole  of  Hfe.  We 
might  again  fitly  compare  his  relation  to  life  to  that 

[157] 


ATTITUDES  AND   AVOWALS 

of  a  priest  who  comprehends  all  human  joys  and 
sorrows,  with  a  great  pity  and  tenderness  in  his 
heart,  but  has  no  personal  share  in  them.  When 
an  event  happens  to  real  men  and  real  women,  they 
think  of  it  singly  and  simply  as  it  is,  in  itself — a 
serious  fact,  maybe,  directly  bearing  on  themselves. 
But  the  writer,  however  near  and  important  it  may 
be  to  him  and  his  personal  life,  cannot  see  it  simply 
and  singly.  He  sees  it  rather  in  a  universalised 
image  of  himself.  If  a  child  is  born  to  him,  it  is 
not  so  much  his  child  as — childhood;  if  one  dear 
to  him  should  die,  it  is  not  so  much  a  loved  one  who 
is  dead  as — death,  and  all  the  pity  of  it.  His 
apprehension  of  experience  is  not,  of  course,  neces- 
sarily so  impersonal  while  he  is  undergoing  it — 
though  his  most  instinctive  moments  are  more  or 
less  tinged  with  consciousness, — but,  when  it  is 
once  gone  by,  he  sees  that  its  value  for  him  has  been 
less  the  human  than  the  literary  value — using  the 
phrase  in  its  fullest  sense;  that  is,  its  value  through 
words  to  the  whole  world  of  men  and  women. 
It  is  by  virtue  of  this  gift  of  artistic  metempsychosis 
— often  superficially  misunderstood  as  insincerity — 
that  the  writer  is  able  to  be  the  mouthpiece  of  every 
variety  of  temperament  and  experience.  It  is 
because,  properly  speaking,  he  has  no  joys  and 
sorrows  of  his  own  to  limit  him  that  he  is  able  to 
express  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  the  whole  world. 
[158] 


THE   WORD   BUSINESS 


He  is,  of  all  men,  the  mime,  the  actor,  par 
excellence,  but  with  this  painful  difference,  that 
whereas  the  actor — except  perhaps  in  the  in- 
tensest  moments  of  the  greatest  actors — knows  he 
is  acting,  the  writer  only  occasionally  suspects,  and 
Uves  through  his  particular  appointed  experience, 
whatever  at  the  moment  it  may  be,  with  all  the 
poignancy  of  reality,  to  find  at  the  end  that  he  has 
been  tricked  into  all  this  heart-break,  for — nothing 
but  a  song. 

This  is  what  I  meant  when  I  spoke  of  a 
writer  being  saddened  by  the  unreality  of  himself. 
Often,  as  he  stands  in  front  of  the  books  he 
has  made,  he  feels  that  it  is  they  that  are  real 
and  he  a  shadow.  They  are  the  product  of 
which  he  is  merely  the  process — the  abandoned 
chrysalis  of  his  Psyche.  Like  the  humble  mother 
of  a  great  man,  he  sees  that  his  significance  was 
to  give  birth  to  these  children — "these  forms 
more  real  than  flesh  and  blood."  Whether  he 
lives  or  dies,  it  is  no  matter.  All  that  life  needed 
of  him  is  there  upon  the  shelves.  Other  men 
arc  valued  for  themselves.  They  are — what  they 
are,  there  visible  and  talking  before  you.  But 
you  talk  to  the  writer  of  his  books— as  you  talk  to 
an  old  lady,  not  of  herself,  but  of  her  beautiful  sons 
and  daughters.  Even  to  the  reader  there  is  some- 
thing mythical  about  the  writer.     So  soon  as  his 

[159] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

name  has  become  classically  established,  it  is  difficult 
to  conceive  of  him  as  a  real  man.  And,  in  fact, 
the  reader  is  unconsciously  right.  A  real  man  he  is 
not,  but,  like  Wordsworth's  cuckoo,  "a  wandering 
voice";  and  this  he  feels  himself  to  be.  Thus  he 
goes  about  among  his  fellows,  with  a  sense  of  being 
abstract  and  phantomlike,  amid  all  their  stable  lives 
and  concrete  interests.  There  is  nothing  he  does 
not  understand  of  this  strangely  pathetic  world — 
but  there  is  nothing  in  it  that  he  can  call  his  own; 
nothing  but  the  words  he  makes  of  it,  nothing  but 
a  song. 

Ah!  but  the  song! 

After  all,  it  is  a  wonderful  business — this  of  words, 
quite  a  fairy-tale  way  of  earning  one's  bread.  Verily, 
the  lot  of  the  writer  brings  him  compensations  for 
his  "unreality."  It  may  even  be  that  some  of  the 
real  men  and  women  would  change  with  him — 
the  real  men  and  women  who  do  the  grim  and  weary 
work  of  the  world.  Their  lot  is  real  indeed.  Some 
of  them  might  perhaps  wish  it  a  little  less  real 
and  be  not  unwilling  to  face  that  sense  of  unreality 
haunting  the  man  whose  business  is  words. 

"What!  "  said  Stevenson's  landlady  to  him  on 
one  occasion,  looking  at  a  page  of  his  manuscript — 
"what!  they  pay  you  for  that!"  Yes!  when  you 
come  to  think  of  it,  it  is  a  Httle  surprising  that  in 
a  world  with  so  many  real  things  to  buy,  they  should 
I160I 


THE   WORD   BUSINESS 


pay  you  for  words — "pay  you  for  ihat!^'  One 
might  reasonably  fear  the  authenticity  of  a  check 
that  was  given  you  for  no  more  tangible  value 
received  than  mere  words:  yet  the  bankers  cash 
them  just  like  any  other  checks — which  to  one  hum- 
ble scrivener  is  one  of  the  standing  marvels  of  the 
literary  life.  Think  of  it! — they  pay  you  for  that! 
No  doubt  one's  readers  are  occasionally  no  less 
surprised. 

Yes!  though,  seriously  speaking,  the  career  of 
letters  is  in  many  respects  a  tragic  one,  yet  the  writer 
may  well  exclaim,  "What  wondrous  life  is  this  I 
lead!  "  for,  like  Andrea  del  Sarto,  in  Browning's 
poem,  he  does  what  some  men  dream  of  all  their 
lives.  Whereas  other  men  must  to  a  large  extent 
occupy  themselves  with  the  mere  journaHsm  of 
living,  and,  highly  or  lowly  stationed,  are  for  the 
most  part  mechanics  engaged  in  running  the  physical 
machine,  the  feeding  and  clothing  and  scavenging 
of  the  world,  slaves  in  mind,  if  not  in  body  as  well, 
to  some  gross  or  frivolous  human  need,  the  writer 
is  all  the  time  dealing  with  the  great  elemental 
forces,  the  motive  passions,  of  life:  the  things  of  the 
spirit,  the  dreams  of  the  heart,  the  aspiration,  the 
romance,  all  the  higher  significances,  of  existence. 
With  such  beautiful  material  as  that  is  his  "busi- 
ness," his  "day's  work."  As  he  comes  down  to 
his  word-factory  in  the  morning,  it  is,  say,  the  love- 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

affairs  of  Lancelot  and  Guinevere  that  claim  his 
pressing  attention.  Or  perhaps  his  arduous  task 
for  that  day  is  to  write  on  Irish  fairies,  or  to  turn 
some  verses  to  a  daffodil.  The  mere  rough  material 
of  his  art,  so  to  say,  is  marble  and  flowers  and 
precious  stones;  his  business  transactions  are  with 
the  rising  moon,  and  the  ancient  sea,  the  face  of 
woman,  and  the  soul  of  man. 

And  when  he  comes  to  deal  with  all  this  thrilling 
material,  what  joy  is  his  as  he  shapes  it  according 
to  his  will,  as  he  watches  it  being  mysteriously 
transformed  beneath  his  pen  into  the  strange  symbol- 
ism of  words,  which,  though  but  little  markings 
on  paper,  and  having  none  of  the  advantages  of 
arts  making  direct  appeal  to  the  senses,  such  as 
painting  and  music,  are  yet  possessed  of  a  magic 
which  combines  and  surpasses  all  the  other  arts  in 
one — 

Strange  craft  of  words,  strange  magic  of  the  pen. 
Whereby  the  dead  still  talk  with  living  men; 
Whereby  a  sentence,  in  its  trivial  scope, 
May  centre  all  we  love  and  all  we  hope; 
And  in  a  couplet,  like  a  rosebud  furled. 
Lie  all  the  wistful  wonder  of  the  world. 

Other  folks,  of  course,  have  their  poor  pleasures, 

but  for  a  man  who  loves  words  no  joy  the  world 

can  give  equals  for  him  the  happiness  of  having 

achieved  a  fine  passage  or  a  perfect  line.     When 

I  162] 


THE   WORD   BUSINESS 


Thackeray  struck  his  fist  on  the  table,  as  the  story 
goes,  when  he  had  finished  the  scene  of  Colonel 
Newcome's  death,  and  exclaimed,  "By  God,  this 
is  genius,"  there  was  no  empire  he  would  have  ac- 
cepted in  exchange  for  that  moment.  We  often 
hear  that  your  true  artist  is  never  satisfied  with  his 
work,  his  ideal  escapes  him,  the  words  seem  poor 
and  lifeless,  etc.,  compared  with  the  dream.  Who- 
ever started  that  story  knew  very  little  about  the 
literary  temperament,  or  he  would  have  known  that 
— the  words  are  the  dream.  The  dream  does  not 
exist  even  as  a  dream,  or  only  very  imperfectly, 
till  it  is  set  down  in  words.  Yes!  the  words  are  the 
dream. 

As  everything  the  old  king  touched  turned  to 
gold,  so  with  the  writer  everything  he  touches  changes 
into  words.  Yet  he  is  well  content,  for  if  all  the 
world  be  shadows  to  him,  and  he  himself  to  himself 
most  shadowy  of  all,  yet  life  has  vouchsafed  him 
one  incomparable  reality — the  reality  of  words. 
Here,  as  in  an  imperishable  essence,  is  the  thrilling 
ichor  of  existence  in  exquisite  distillation.  That  he 
should  ever  have  deemed  his  life  unreal  was  but  a 
passing  concession  to  the  coarser  standards  of  reahty; 
for,  indeed,  his  is  the  secret  of  a  reality  purged  of  its 
mortal  parts,  caught  in  its  high  expressive  moments, 
and  removed  from  the  decaying  touch  of  time;  a 
reality  sublimated  and  eternalised,  a  reality  ascended 
[163] 


ATTITUDES   AND   AVOWALS 

into  the  finer  life  of  words.  After  all,  starlight 
is  no  less  real  than  sunlight.  The  hot  sunlight  of 
fact  is  not  the  only  reality.  Indeed,  to  the  writer 
life  seems  still  more  real,  and  how  much  finer,  as 
he  lives  it — in  the  starlight  of  words. 


1 164] 


Part   II 

SOME   RETROSPEC- 
TIVE    REVIEWS 


165] 


SOME  RETROSPEC- 
TIVE     REVIEWS 

I 

GRANT    ALLEN 


GRANT    ALLEN    has  died    at   a  moment 
when  we  had  most  need  of  him,  and  at 
the  saddest  time    for    himself.     Not  un- 
prophetically  did  lie  sing: — 

"...  our  grave  shall  be  on  the  side 
Of  the  Moabite  mount." 

It  is  sadder  even  than  that,  for  to  die  on  the  threshold 
of  their  promised  land  is  the  fate  of  every  advanced 
dreamer  and  thinker.  Grant  Allen  has  died  at  a 
moment  when  the  very  vision  of  that  promised  land 
is  obscured  by  every  form  of  reactionary  darkness. 
He  lived  to  see,  not  indeed  the  fulfilment  of  the 
civilised  ideals  for  which  lifelong  he  did  such  valiant 
battle — but  the  overwhelming  triumph  of  precisely 
all  the  opponent  ideals  which  he  hated  and  dreaded 
[167] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

with  his  whole  soul.  A  democrat,  he  lived  to  see 
democracy  once  more  in  the  dust,  and  every  form 
of  tyranny  and  snobbery  firmer  than  ever  in  their 
seats;  a  clear-seer  and  far-thinker,  he  lived  to  see 
every  form  of  superstition  re-enthroned,  and  England 
seriously  dreaming  once  more  of  Rome;  a  citizen-of- 
the-world,  he  lived  to  see  race-hatred  revived  with 
mediaeval  fury,  and  narrow  patriotism  once  more 
dividing  nations;  a  man  of  peace,  he  lived  to  see 
civil  freedom  threatened  by  a  militarism  insolent 
and  cruel  as  the  world  has  ever  known.  Yes,  surely 
it  was  a  sad  moment  for  Grant  Allen  to  die.  A 
few  years  before,  the  outlook  had  seemed  so  different, 
and  of  all  those  who  were  then  eagerly  lending  a 
hand  to  the  imminent  socialistic,  philosophic,  artistic 
millennium,  none  was  more  effectively  eager,,  or 
more  boyishly  hopeful,  than  Grant  Allen.  I  think 
it  was  the  indignant  reception  given  to  The  Woman 
who  Did  which  first  opened  his  eyes  to  the  superficial 
nature  of  the  imagined  "advance"  of  thought  and 
social  ideals  in  England.  We  hadn't  even  gone  so 
far  as  to  give  patient  hearing  to  an  honest,  pure- 
purposed,  though  it  might  be  mistaken,  thinker. 
Stones  were  still  regarded  as  the  appropriate  reward 
of  the  prophets — small  stones,  indeed,  as  Dr.  Stock- 
mann  said  m  An  Enemy  of  the  People.  Minor 
stones  for  minor  prophets,  in  a  day  of  small  things. 
When  I  last  had  any  long  talk  with  Grant  Allen, 
f  i681 


GRANT  ALLEN 


I  had  come  somewhat  dolefully  bewailing  what 
we  called  "the  slump  in  ideas,"  and  I  was  surprised 
to  find  how  little  comfort  he  could  give  me.  For  once 
his  optimism  seemed  to  have  failed  him.  For  that 
moment  he  really  seemed  to  have  just  "given  it  up"; 
but  his  despair  characteristically  vanished  in  an 
instant  as,  catching  sight  of  a  little  Alpine  flower, 
which,  to  his  great  joy,  had  been  persuaded  to  grow 
in  his  hill-top  garden,  he  gathered  a  blossom  and 
began  to  discourse  in  his  own  fascinating  way  upon 
its  "  honey-guides"  and  all  the  wonder  of  its  delicate 
mechanism.  Straightway  we  had  both  clean  for- 
gotten the  Dreyfus  case,  absorbed  together  in  a 
flower.  In  cosmos  and  micro-cosmos,  in  the  won- 
ders of  what  went  right  in  natural  law.  Grant 
Allen  consoled  himself  for  the  marvels  of  what  went 
wrong  in  human  history.  And  on  this  particular 
occasion,  I  know  I  had  caught  him  in  an  off  moment, 
and  the  malaria  with  which  for  some  months  he  had 
been  depressed  must  be  made  allowance  for  in  that 
momentary  daunting  of  his  spirit  before  the  gigantic 
evils  of  the  civilised  world.  Had  I  met  him  an  hour 
or  two  later,  I  have  no  doubt  I  should  have  found 
him  once  more  buoyantly  confident  of  better  things. 
He  was  too  long-sighted,  too  tenacious  of  practical 
melioristic  conceptions,  to  mistake  a  temporary 
reaction  for  permanent  defeat.  Yet  the  word 
"temporary"  has  not  the  same  consolation  for  a 
[169] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

fighter  of  fifty  as  it  has  for  some  young  combatant 
in  his  twenties,  who  can  afford  to  wait  out  with  a 
certain  complaisance  the  disappointing  ebb  of  the 
great  wave  on  which  he  has  set  his  hopes.  "Tem- 
porary"— yes!  but  what  is  the  Hfe  of  man  upon 
the  earth.  The  tide  will,  of  course,  turn.  We  are 
only  engaged  in  making  the  inevitable  step  backward 
before  we  make  two  forward — but,  what  joy  when 
we  make  those  forward  steps  will  they  be  to  Grant 
Allen  ?  Had  his  life  only  been  reasonably  prolonged, 
as  happily  the  life  of  our  master-rebel,  Mr.  George 
Meredith,  has  been  prolonged,  he  might  have  seen 
the  sunlit  crest  of  another  mighty  wave  of  freedom. 
Now  he  lies  in  the  dark  trough  between. 


n 


Recently,  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  enumerating  the 
chill  accomplishments  of  the  dead,  gave  more  names 
to  knowledge  than  I  dare  to  remember.  He  was 
so  many  " — ists,"  the  dead  man  we  loved;  but  what 
would  they  all  have  mattered  had  he  not  been — 
Grant  Allen.  The  world  was  always  meanly  critical 
of  him.  The  little  precious  writers  were  eager  to 
say  that  he  was  no  writer,  the  scientists  to  pick  holes 
in  his  science,  the  philosophers  to  smile  at  his  Force 
and  Energy.  There  was  nothing  he  set  himself  to 
t  170] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


do,  but  some  small-souled  thing  of  a  critic  would 
have  his  little  sneer.  Through  all,  however,  he 
had  the  courage  to  go  on  being — Grant  Allen. 
Others  might  be  more  this,  or  greater  that.  Science 
has  its  tiny  grammarians,  its  old-maidish  pedants, 
no  less  than  literature;  men  who  can  no  more  see 
a  generalisation  than  the  eye  of  a  fly  can  take  in  a 
mountain.  Such  flies,  bred  in  the  backyards  of 
every  science  or  art,  buzzed  all  his  life  round  the 
head  of  Grant  Allen.  For  the  most  part  he  was 
too  absorbed  in  the  work  he  had  to  do,  to  notice 
them;  and  when  occasionally  they  did  sting  him — 
he  just  forgot  it. 

Of  science  I  know  no  more  than  one  foredoomed 
to  the  practice  of  literature  cannot  escape  knowing 
in  an  age  of  science.  Grant  Allen  smiled  when  he 
gave  me  long  ago  a  copy  of  Force  and  Energy — 
as  well  he  might.  I  read  it  hard,  because  he  gave 
it  to  me,  and  there  are  one  or  two  additional  lines 
in  my  brow  to  this  day  to  witness  that  I  speak  the 
truth.  All  that  remains  to  me  is  a  somewhat  shaky 
idea  of  two  very  rudimentary  definitions,  the  two 
school-boy  definitions  of  energy.  One  I  know  is 
potential  and  the  other  is  kinetic,  but,  for  the  life 
of  me,  I  cannot  say,  at  this  distance  of  time,  which 
is  which!  I'm  afraid  I  console  myself  with  a  very 
shadowy  respect  for  abstract  thinking.  I  wouldn't 
part  with  my  copy  of  Force  and  Energy  for  any 

I  171] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

inducement;  but  that,  I  fear,  is  on  account  of  a 
simple  human  verse  Grant  Allen  wrote  in  it  as  he 
gave  it  to  me.  I  knew  he  would  think  no  less  of 
me  because  I  barely  knew  what  the  book  was  about. 
He  was  one  of  those  rare  men  to  whom  one  may  safely 
tell  the  truth,  the  truth  of  one's  ignorance.  Know- 
ing more  than  most  men  who  know  much,  knowledge 
was  with  him  no  superstition.  He  could  respect 
an  inspired  ignorance  when  he  met  it!  I  need  not 
parade  the  various  forms  of  knowledge  upon  Grant 
Allen's  acquirements  in  which  I  am  singularly 
unqualified  to  give  an  opinion.  How  speak  of 
him  as  a  botanist  when  all  I  know  of  flowers — out 
of  Shakespeare — I  learnt  by  looking  through  that 
little  pocket  microscope,  so  well  known  to  his  friends, 
which  he  used  constantly  to  twirl  and  twirl  between 
his  finger  and  thumb  as  he  talked,  and  without  which 
I  really  think  he  could  not  have  talked  at  all.  I 
have  seen  him  stop  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence  as 
he  momentarily  lost  hold  of  it,  and  then  once  more 
go  on  flowingly  as  he  had  it  twirling  again — like  the 
boy  in  Scott's  class  at  school,  whose  memory  seemed 
to  be  located  in  a  certain  button  of  his  waistcoat, 
which  he  gripped  confidently  as  his  turn  to  answer 
questions  came  round.  Scott,  noting  this,  cut  off 
the  button;  and,  thus  robbed  of  his  mnemonic  stay, 
the  hapless  leader  of  his  class  toppled  and  fell. 
Scott  took  his  place,  a  place  never  regained;  and 
[172] 


GR.\NT  ALLEN 


Scott's  life-long  remorse  at  the  incident  is  well  known 
to  readers  of  the  autobiography.  No  one  was  ever 
cruel  enough  to  rob  Grant  Allen  of  his  mnemonic 
microscope,  though  I  confess  that  my  fingers  often 
came  near  to  it.  Now,  I  wonder  if  his  memory  lived 
in  that  little  optical  toy,  as  the  soul  of  the  great  chief 
in  The  Great  Taboo  lived  in  the  mistletoe  branch  of 
the  sacred  tree.  Will  it  pass  to  the  next  inheritor  of 
the  sad  little  microscope  ?  If  so,  what  an  inheritance ! 
For  one  of  the  many  remarkable  things  about  Grant 
Allen  was  the  prodigious  range  and  accuracy  and 
instantaneous  readiness  of  his  memory.  This  was 
so  proverbial  amongst  his  friends  that  one  of  the 
dearest  of  them  coined  the  phrase,  "We  must  look 
it  up  in  Grant " ;  and  in  his  whimsical  way  he  once 
discussed  the  scheme  of  abandoning  literature  and 
setting  up  as  a  peripatetic  encyclopedia,  a  modern 
Camerarius,  a  sort  of  general  call-office  of  knowledge. 
But  it  was  not  so  much  the  extent  of  his  knowl- 
edge as  his  manner  of  imparting  it  which  was  one 
of  the  many  personal  gifts  of  a  liberally  gifted  per- 
sonality. Dull  slaves  of  knowledge,  pedants  whose 
one  gift,  after  industry,  is  the  power  of  making 
interesting  things  dull,  naturally  try  to  cheapen  the 
power  of  making  dull  things  interesting.  They 
call  it  "popularising."  Whenever  a  man  with  the 
gift  of  vivid,  illustrative  expression  gets  hold  of  some 
subject  hitherto  monopolised  by  specialists  hooting 

[173] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

to  each  other  in  dark  technalities,  and  makes  it 
clear  and  operative  for  the  average  intelligent  human 
being,  the  process  is  belittled  as  "popularising." 
When  anyone  has  written  history  in  a  readable  form 
— as  say  Macaulay,  Froude,  and  Green — they  are 
said  to  "popularise"  history.  They  are  not  dull 
enough  to  be  trustworthy.  Of  course,  the  cry  has 
been  raised  from  the  remotest  time.  Dante  heard 
it  in  his  day,  when  he  dared  to  mould  to  a  literary 
use  a  vernacular  tongue.  The  first  men  who  wrote 
serious  scientific  and  philosophic  treatises  in  any 
language  but  Latin— they  heard  it.  The  men  who 
turned  the  Bible  into  English  and  German — didn't 
they  hear  it?  O  this  dreadful  "popularisation" 
of  hidden  knowledge,  which  only  the  bats  and  owls 
of  university  libraries  were  born  to! 

To  some  such  chorus  Grant  Allen  "popularised" 
science.  He  made  it  clear,  he  made  it  simple,  he 
made  it  interesting,  he  made  it  positively  romantic; 
for  he  was  more  even  than  an  apt  exponent,  he  was 
no  little  of  a  poet,  and  those  who  see  nothing  in  such 
books  as  his  Evolutionist  at  Large,  Colin  Clout's 
Calendar,  Vignettes  from  Nature,  Moorland  Idyls, 
but  clear  statement  and  luminous  exposition,  do 
scant  justice,  to  a  rare  literary  gift  exercising  itself 
not  merely  with  expository  skill,  but  also  artistically, 
upon  difficult  new  material.  More  than  clearness 
of  statement  was  needed.     Some  of  the  dullest  of 


GRANT  ALLEN 


writers  are  as  clear  as  they  are  dry.  Grant  Allen's 
individual  clearness  came  of  imagination,  as  his 
charm  came  of  an  illustrative  fancy  and  a  gay 
humanity  applied  to  subjects  usually  immured  from 
traffic  with  such  frivolous  qualities.  Thus  he  not 
only  made  knowledge  delightful  to  know,  but 
delightful  to  read.  In  short,  he  gave  us  something 
like  literary  equivalents  of  his  subjects.  His  essays 
were  not  always  flowers  and  butterflies,  but  they  often 
were,  and  certainly  they  were  such  flowers  and 
butterflies  as  gladden  but  seldom  the  volcanic  rocks 
of  science. 

Mere  clearness  of  statement — I  said  just  now. 
I  beg  to  withdraw  the  suspicion  of  depreciation  in 
the  phrase;  for  the  aesthetic  charm  of  a  really  masterly 
clearness  of  statement  is  one  which  qualifies  for 
high  literary  honours.  There  was  a  time  in  all 
our  lives  when  we  used  to  say  that  Pope  was  no 
poet — because,  I  suppose,  he  is  not  all  sensual 
adjectives.  A  friend  who  had  realised  before  me 
the  poetry  of  thought  clearly  and  rhythmically 
expressed  long  ago  cured  me  of  that.  So  latterly 
with  prose,  the  beautiful  triumphs  of  the  musical, 
decorative,  school — De  Quincey,  Pater,  Stevenson 
— have  made  us  think  of  prose  too  much  as  though 
it  were  merely  a  ^Morris  wall-paper.  Let  it  be  a 
Morris  wall-paper  by  all  means,  but  let  it  remain 
everything  else  it  can  efficiently  be  as  well.  Bacon's 
[175  J 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

Essays  entirely  depend  for  their  endurance  on  their 
clearness  of  statement. 

Now,  judged  merely  by  a  Uterary  standard, 
valued  merely  as  expression  which  is  capable  of 
taking  hold  of  a  complex,  debatable  subject,  and 
treating  it  clearly,  completely,  and  charmingly, 
though  from  an  unfamiliar,  even  startling,  stand- 
point, I  would  venture  to  make  a  high  claim  for 
some  papers  which  Grant  Allen  probably  thought 
comparatively  little  of,  and  anyone  of  which  he 
most  likely  dashed  off  on  his  supernatural  type- 
writer under  the  hour.  I  mean  those  explosive 
nutshells  of  what  one  might  call  prophetic  thinking, 
first  contributed  to  the  Westminster  Gazette  and 
since  collected  into  a  volume  under  the  title  of  Post- 
Prandial  Philosophy.  If  any  modern  English 
writer  has  matched  these  little  "journalistic"  essays 
in  swift  thinking  and  swift  statement,  has  packed 
so  much  mind  in  so  small  a  capsule  of  printed 
matter,  and  has,  at  the  same  time,  contrived  to  give 
so  personal  an  accent  of  charm — or  power  of  pro- 
ducing furious  irritation  (the  result  of  charm  applied 
to  the  wrong  reader) — to  his  spare,  hard-worked, 
undermanned,  two  thousand  words — I  think  it  can 
only  be  Grant  Allen  under  still  another  of  those 
pseudonyms  in  which  he  felt  it  only  decent  to  drape 
the  fruitfulness  of  his  abounding  muse. 

Grant  Allen  was  one  of  those  instructive  writers 
[176] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


who  write  best  when  they  think  least  about  it;  when, 
so  to  speak,  they  forget  they  are  writing.  It  was 
not  natural  to  him  to  work  self-consciously,  like 
prose  writers  such  as  Pater  and  Stevenson.  He 
wrote  best  when  he  wrote  as  he  talked,  fired  with 
interest  for  the  thing  he  had  to  express,  and  con- 
cerned only  to  state  it  as  clearly  and  adequately 
as  possible.  Curiously  enough,  in  the  modesty  of 
his  mind  it  never  seemed  to  occur  to  him  that  this 
was  his  native  way  of  being  an  artist  in  words. 
Such  things  as  the  Post-Prandial  Philosophy  he 
regarded  as  all  in  the  day's  work,  and  prided  himself 
rather  on  those  occasional  experiments  in  the  more 
conscious  and  more  traditional  "literary"  methods, 
where  there  is  no  doubt  he  was  least  successful. 
I  remember,  during  another  talk  I  had  with  him 
not  long  before  he  died,  we  chanced  to  speak  of  a 
recent  criticism  of  one  of  his  books,  highly  apprecia- 
tive in  the  main,  but  including  the  remark  that  Mr. 
Allen  wrote  nowadays  a  little  more  hastily  than 
formerly — though  what  wonder  when  one  con- 
sidered his  enormous  productiveness,  etc. 

Grant  Allen,  who  seldom  saw  any  criticisms  of 
his  writings,  and  refrained  purposely  from  sub- 
scribing to  any  press-cutting  agency,  was  pleased 
with  the  review — but  he  laughed  good-humouredly 
at  the  statement  that  he  wrote  less  carefully  than 
formerly.  "Why!"  he  said,  "I  take  ten  times  the 
12  [177] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

pains.  Look  here!"  and  he  darted  off  to  his  study 
with  one  of  his  long,  eager  strides,  and  brought 
out  a  type-written  manuscript.  "Look  here!"  he 
said,  "  does  this  look  like  carelessness  ?  "  The  type- 
writing was  like  a  moving  ant-hill  with  minute 
innumerable  corrections  in  his  exquisite,  small 
hand.  Of  course,  I  didn't  say  that  I  regretted 
these  evidences  of  a  growing  self-consciousness  in 
his  writing,  and  that  the  old,  swift,  nail-on-the-head 
"carelessness"  was  best. 

There  are,  need  one  say,  as  many  ideals  of  literary 
style  as  there  are  real  writers.  The  style  Grant 
Allen  was  born  to,  the  style  that  was  the  man  him- 
self and  no  other,  belonged  to  a  method  of  style 
which  we  are  apt  to  regard  as  peculiarly  modern, 
but  which  in  reality  is  as  old  as  any  other — the  style 
founded  on  talk,  the  colloquial  style,  so  called, 
though  the  word  "colloquial"  has  become  too  sug- 
gestive of  a  certain  confidential  unction  in  a  writer 
to  allow  the  phrase  to  be  used  with  safety.  It  is  a 
style  which  does  not  readily  lend  itself  to  quotation. 
Its  metier  is  not  the  purple  passage.  I  have  been 
looking  through  Post-Prandial  Philosophy  to  see 
if  I  can  find  a  passage  which  may,  without  too  much 
loss  of  blood,  be  severed  from  its  life-giving  context, 
in  illustration  of  the  spirited  direct  way  of  writing  in 
which  I  conceive  Grant  Allen  to  have  been  at  his 
best.  Really,  the  illustration  is  inadequate,  for  these 
[178] 


GRANT   ALI.EN 


little  papers  are,  in  their  comparatively  modest  way, 
as  complete  and  organic  as  sonnets.  However, 
there  is  one,  "About  Abroad,"  which  may  endure 
the  vivisection,  and  at  the  same  time  provide  us 
with  a  characteristic  example  of  Grant  Allen's 
way  of  looking  at  things. 

"The  place  known  as  Abroad  is  not  nearly  so 
nice  a  country  to  live  in  as  England.  The  people 
who  inhabit  Abroad  are  called  Foreigners.  They 
are  in  every  way  and  at  all  times  inferior  to  English- 
men. These  Post-Prandials  used  once  to  be  pro- 
vided with  a  sting  in  their  tail,  like  the  common 
scorpion.  By  way  of  change,  I  turn  them  out  now 
with  a  sting  in  their  head,  like  the  common  mosquito. 
Mosquitoes  are  much  less  dangerous  than  scorpions, 
but  they're  a  deal  more  irritating.  Not  that  I  am 
sanguine  enough  to  expect  I  shall  irritate  English- 
men. .  .  .  To  most  Englishmen,  the  world  divides 
itself  naturally  into  two  unequal  and  non-equivalent 
portions — x^broad  and  England.  Of  these  two. 
Abroad  is  much  the  larger  country;  but  England, 
though  smaller,  is  vastly  more  important.  Abroad 
is  inhabited  by  Frenchmen  and  Germans,  who 
speak  their  own  foolish  and  chattering  languages. 
Part  of  it  is  likewise  pervaded  by  Chinamen,  who 
wear  pigtails;  and  the  outlying  districts  belong  to 
the  poor  heathen,  chiefly  interesting  as  a  field  of 
missionary  enterprise,  and  a  possible  market  for 
Manchester  piece-goods.  ...  If  you  ask  most 
people  what  has  become  of  Tom,  they  will  answer 
at  once  with  the  specific  information,  'Oh,  Tom 

I  179] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

has  gone  Abroad.'  I  have  one  stereotyped  rejoinder 
to  an  answer  like  that — 'What  part  of  Abroad, 
please?'  That  usually  stumps  them.  Abroad  is 
abroad;  and  like  the  gentleman  who  was  asked  in 
examination  to  'name  the  minor  prophets,'  they 
decline  to  make  invidious  distinctions.  It  is  nothing 
to  them  whether  he  is  tea-planting  in  the  Himalayas, 
or  sheep-farming  in  Australia,  or  orange-growing  in 
Florida,  or  ranching  in  Colorado.  If  he  is  not  in 
England,  why  then  he  is  elsewhere;  and  elsewhere 
is  Abroad,  and  is  indivisible.  .  .  .  People  will  tell 
you,  'Foreigners  do  this';  'Foreigners  do  that'; 
'Foreigners  smoke  so  much';  'Foreigners  always 
take  coffee  for  breakfast.'  '  Indeed,'  I  love  to  answer, 
'I've  never  observed  it  myself  in  Central  Asia.'  .  .  . 
Would  it  surprise  you  to  learn  that  most  people 
live  in  Asia?  Would  it  surprise  you  to  learn  that 
most  people  are  poor  benighted  heathen,  and  that, 
of  the  remainder,  most  people  are  Mahommedans, 
and  that,  of  the  Christians,  who  come  next,  most 
people  are  Roman  Catholics,  and  that,  of  the  other 
Christian  sects,  most  people  belong  to  the  Greek 
Church,  and  that,  last  of  all,  we  get  Protestants, 
more  particularly  AngHcans,  Wesleyans,  Baptists? 
Have  you  ever  really  realised  the  startling  fact  that 
England  is  an  island  off  the  coast  of  Europe?  that 
Europe  is  a  peninsula  at  the  end  of  Asia?  that 
France,  Germany,  Italy,  are  the  fringe  of  Russia? 
Have  you  ever  really  realised  that  the  English- 
speaking  race  lives  mostly  in  America?  that  the 
country  is  vastly  more  populous  than  London? 
that  our  class  is  the  froth  and  scum  of  society? 
Think  these  things  out,  and  try  to  measure  them  on 
[iSo] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


the  globe.     And  when  you  speak  of  Abroad,    do 
please  specify  what  part  of  it." 

This,  I  submit,  is  very  good  writing;  and,  like  all 
good  writing,  very  pleasant  writing.  Its  interest 
for  us  does  not  end  in  the  delivery  of  its  message. 
It  is  a  pleasure  to  read  for  its  own  sake — for  the 
uimaistakable  sound  of  a  man's  voice  behind  it, 
one  man's  voice  and  no  other's,  the  sense  of  nearness 
it  brings  across  the  page  to  a  forcible,  thinking, 
humorous,  really  human  human  being.  It  is  not  only 
clever,  it  is  good  writing,  in  the  true  sense  of  the 
word.  You  may  see  little  in  it  to  wonder  at.  I 
never  said  it  was  wonderful,  or  great.  Writing, 
like  men  and  women,  need  not  be  great  to  be  good. 
But  this  I  will  hazard,  that  such  "mere  journalistic" 
writing,  backed  by  a  personality  such  as  Grant 
Allen's,  is  more  likely  to  engage  the  attention  of 
that  much-courted  tribunal,  posterity,  than  the 
sugar-candy  euphuism,  the  imitation  Stevenson, 
which  passes  for  high  art  at  the  moment,  and  towards 
which  Grant  Alien,  in  the  innocence  of  his  heart, 
used  sometimes,  I  know,  to  cast  longing  eyes.  Of 
course,  the  passage  I  have  quoted  is  only  an  illus- 
tration in  little  of  a  style  which  Grant  Allen  wielded 
no  less  successfully  on  a  broader  canvas  and  with 
a  fuller  brush.  Probably  the  fullest,  most  masterly 
writing  he  ever  achieved  is  contained  in  the  numerous 
articles  which  he  contributed  to  The  Fortnightly 
[i8i] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

Review.  These  articles  will,  no  doubt,  be  collected 
some  day.  Those  relating  to  anthropology  and 
folk-lore  have  already  been  worked  into  his  book 
on  The  Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God.  Readers  in 
England — of  course,  I  mean  "popular"  readers — 
who  are  unfortunate  enough  to  think  somewhat 
in  advance  of  their  fellows,  owe  more  than  perhaps 
they  remember  to  those  stimulating  germinal  articles 
in  which  Grant  Allen,  earhest  and  most  successfully, 
sowed  the  dragon's  teeth  which  produced  him  such 
a  plentiful  crop  of  those  armed  men,  the  critics. 
And  in  one  of  those  articles,  particularly,  one  wliich 
necessarily  subjected  him  to  their  blindest  misunder- 
standing— I  refer  to  "The  New  Hedonism" — he 
came  nearest,  I  think,  to  fulfilhng  that  wistfully 
held  ideal  of  decorative  prose  to  which  I  have  made 
reference.  What  a  tapestry  can  be  made  out  of 
sheer  knowledge  this  passage,  I  think,  successfully 
illustrates: — 

"  Not  otherwise  is  it  with  the  beauty  that  appeals  to 
the  eye.  Every  lovely  object  in  organic  nature  owes 
its  loveliness  directly  to  sexual  selection.  The  whole 
aesthetic  sense  in  animals  had  this  for  its  origin. 
Every  spot  on  the  feathery  wings  of  butterflies  was 
thus  produced;  every  eye  on  the  gorgeous,  glancing 
plumage  of  the  peacock.  The  bronze  and  golden 
beetles,  the  flashing  blue  of  the  dragon-fly,  the 
brilliant  colours  of  tropical  moths,  the  lamp  of  the 
glow-worm,  the  gleaming  light  of  the  fire-fly  in  the 
[182] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


thicket,  spring  from  the  same  source.  The  infinite 
variety  of  crest  and  gorget  among  the  iridescent 
humming-birds;  the  glow  of  the  trogon,  the  barbets 
among  the  palm-blossoms;  the  exquisite  plumage 
of  the  birds  of  paradise;  the  ball-and-socket  orna- 
ment of  the  argus  pheasant;  the  infinite  hues  of 
parrot  and  macaw;  the  strange  bill  of  the  gaudy- 
toucan,  and  the  crimson  wattles  of  the  turkey, 
still  tell  one  story.  The  sun-birds  deck  themselves 
for  their  courtship  in  ruby  and  topaz,  in  chryso- 
prase  and  sapphire.  Even  the  antlers  of  deer, 
the  twisted  horns  of  antelopes,  and  the  graceful 
forms  or  dappled  coats  of  so  many  other  mammals 
have  been  developed  in  like  manner  by  sexual  selec- 
tion. The  very  fish  in  the  sea  show  similar  results 
of  esthetic  preferences.  The  butterfly  fins  of  the 
gurnard  and  the  courting  colours  of  the  stickleback 
have  but  one  explanation.  .  .  .  Even  the  basis 
of  the  dance,  and,  therefore,  to  a  great  extent  of 
the  lyric,  poetic,  and  dramatic  faculty,  is  closely 
bound  up  in  like  manner  with  the  choice  in  pairing. 
The  minuets  of  the  blackcock,  the  aerial  antics  of 
the  peewit,  the  meeting-places  and  ball-rooms  of 
so  many  grouse  and  other  game-birds,  the  strutting 
of  the  peacock,  the  display  of  the  argus  pheasant, 
the  coquetting  of  butterflies,  the  strange  courtship 
of  spiders.  .  .  ." 

A  little  more  self-conscious  art,  a  little  less  ethical 
enthusiasm,  could  have  made  a  little  more  of  the 
material;  such  material  of  strangely  shaped  and 
coloured  words  as  "trogon,"  and  "barbet,"  and 
"toucan" — but   merely   to   bring  together,   in   the 


SOME   RETR(3SPECTIVE   REVIEWS 


inspiration  of  argument  rather  than  art,  so  many 
short  clauses,  each  containing  at  least  one  purple 
or  orange  name,  stimulating  to  the  imagination 
cither  by  strangeness  or  familiarity,  was  no  small 
literary  success. 

One  more  quotation  I  shall  make,  again  illustra- 
tive of  Grant  Allen's  occasional  success  in  what  I 
daresay  he  would  have  called  "the  higher  style," 
a  passage  in  which  for  once  he  dropped  the  irony 
which  was  his  usual  manner,  and  allowed  the  aspira- 
tion of  his  heart,  the  simple  sincerity  of  his  hope, 
to  escape  in  a  passage  of  eloquent  pleading,  through 
which  blows  the  keen  sweet  air  one  of  the  purest 
of  recent  lives  could  only  breathe.  It  is  from  the 
preface  to  his  least  fortunate  book,  his  second 
"hill-top  novel,"  The  British  Barbarians: — 

"I  am  writmg  in  my  study  on  a  heatherclad  hill- 
top. When  I  raise  my  eye  from  my  sheet  of  foolscap 
it  falls  upon  miles  and  miles  of  broad,  open  moor- 
land. My  window  looks  out  upon  unsuUied  nature. 
Everything  around  is  fresh,  and  pure,  and  whole- 
some. Through  the  open  casement  the  scent  of  the 
pines  blows  in  with  the  breeze  from  the  neighbouring 
firwood.  Keen  airs  sigh  through  the  pine-needles. 
Grasshoppers  chirp  from  deep  tangles  of  bracken. 
The  song  of  a  skylark  drops  from  the  sky  like  soft 
rain  in  summer;  in  the  evening,  a  night-jar  croons 
to  us  his  monotonously  passionate  love-wail,  from  his 
perch  on  the  gnarled  boughs  of  the  wind-swept 
larch  that  crowns  the  upland.  But  away  below 
[184] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


in  Ihe  valley,  as  night  draws  on,  a  lurid  glare  reddens 
the  north-eastern  horizon.  It  marks  the  spot  where 
the  great  wen  of  London  heaves  and  festers.  Up 
here  on  the  freer  hills  the  sharp  air  blows  in  upon 
us,  limpid  and  clear  from  a  thousand  leagues  of 
open  ocean;  down  there  in  the  crowded  town  it 
stagnates  and  ferments,  polluted  with  the  diseases 
and  vices  of  centuries.  .  .  .  Far,  far  below,  the 
theatre  and  the  music-hall  spread  their  garish  gas- 
lamps.  Let  who  will  heed  them.  But  here  on  the 
open  hill-top  we  know  fresher  and  more  wholesome 
delights.  Those  feverish  joys  allure  us  not.  O 
decadents  of  the  town,  we  have  seen  your  sham 
idyls,  your  tinsel  Arcadias.  We  have  tired  of  their 
stuffy  atmosphere,  their  dazzling  jets,  their  weary 
ways,  their  gaudy  dresses;  we  shun  the  sunken 
cheeks,  the  lack-lustre  eyes,  the  heart-sick  souls  of 
your  painted  goddesses,  .  .  .  Your  halls  are  too 
stifling  with  carbonic  acid  gas;  for  us,  we  breathe 
oxygen.  .  .  .  How  we  smile,  we  who  live  here, 
when  some  dweller  in  the  masts  and  smoke  of  the 
valley  confounds  our  delicate  atmosphere,  redolent 
of  honey,  and  echoing  the  manifold  murmur  of  bees, 
with  that  stifling  miasma  of  the  gambling  hell  and 
the  dancing  saloon!  Trust  me,  dear  friend,  the 
moorland  air  is  far  other  than  you  fancy.  You 
can  wander  up  here  along  the  purple  ridges,  hand 
locked  in  hand  with  those  you  love,  without  fear 
of  harm  to  yourself  or  your  comrade.  No  Bloom 
of  Ninon  here,  but  fresh  cheeks  like  the  peach- 
blossom  where  the  sun  has  kissed  it;  no  casual 
fruition  of  loveless,  joyless  harlots,  but  lifelong 
saturation  of  your  own  heart's  desire  in  your  own 

[  185  ] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

heart's  innocence.  Ozone  is  better  than  all  the 
champagne  in  the  Strand  or  Piccadilly.  If  only 
you  will  believe  it,  it  is  purity,  and  life,  and  sympathy, 
and  vigor.  Its  perfect  freshness  and  perpetual  fount 
of  youth  keep  your  age  from  withering.  It  crimsons 
the  sunset,  and  lives  in  the  afterglow.  If  these 
delights  thy  mind  may  move,  leave,  O,  leave  the 
meretricious  town,  and  come  to  the  airy  peaks." 


Ill 


These  quotations  illustrate  not  merely  Grant 
Allen's  talent  for  literary  expression,  but  they  may 
stand,  too,  as  illustrations  of  the  kind  of  thought 
he  best  cared  to  express,  and  the  temper  in  which  he 
strove  to  express  it.  Grant  Allen  was  one  of  those 
whom  an  inscrutable  Providence  creates  EngUsh- 
men  (I  know,  of  course,  technically  he  was  Irish- 
French-Canadian)  for  the  express  purpose  of  their 
differing  on  every  conceivable  question  with  their 
fellow  countrymen.  This  is  one  of  the  many  ways 
in  which  England  is  seen  to  be  in  the  pecuHar  care 
of  the  invisible  powers.  Perhaps  the  soil  of  no 
other  nation  is  so  richly  fertilised  with  the  martyred 
remains  of  its  artists  and  thinkers.  Grant  Allen 
was  one  of  those  true  patriots  who  do  their  country 
the  great  service  of  differing  from  it  on  every  pos- 
sible occasion.  Was  there  any  subject  on  which 
[186] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


Grant  Allen  agreed  with  England — or  any  subject  on 
which  England  agreed  with  Grant  Allen  ?  I  suppose 
one  might,  with  diligence,  find  one  or  two.  Read, 
for  example,  those  "Plain  Words  on  the  Woman 
Question,"  in  Number  274  (October,  1889)  of  The 
Fortnightly  Review,  and  you  will  find  him  ten  years 
ago  vigorously  sounding  that  anti-Malthusian  alarm 
which  Zola  has  set  to  mighty  drums  in  Fecondite, 
a  book  of  which,  one  hears,  England  has  a  yet  no 
need.  Yet,  let  it  by  all  means  be  allowed  that 
Grant  Allen  was  at  variance  with  his  country  on 
most  other  questions.  He  was  a  Home-Ruler,  a 
Socialist,  an  "Atheist"  (so-called)  and  (in  theory) 
a  "Free-Lover" — everything  but  a  housebreaker. 
I  could  think  of  nothing  worse  to  say  of  him  were 
I  advocatus  diaholi.  O  yes!  there  is  some  fear  that 
he  was  a  Little  Englander.  But  there  are  differences 
which,  like  certain  bombs,  explode;  and  there  are 
differences  which  fall  softly  in  the  grass  of  oblivion, 
and  are  forgotten.  England  now  takes  sociaUsm 
and  atheism  (long  since  respectable  as  "agnosti- 
cism") quite  calmly.  The  Home-Ruler  and  the 
Little  Englander  it  keeps  alive  because  political 
meetings  must  have  something  to  play  with.  But 
— Free  Love!  !  An  evil  and  adulterous  generation 
naturally  takes  that  seriously.  Grant  Allen  was 
at  liberty  to  call  London  a  "squalid  village,"  or 
to  plump  down  any  of  his  delicious  paradoxes,  such 
[187] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 


as:  "  We  Celts  henceforth  will  rule  the  roost  in  Brit- 
ain " ;  he  might  protest  against  preserved  partridges, 
or  say  what  he  pleased  about  ''the  aristocracy"  ; 
but  when  it  came  to  suggesting  that  a  notoriously 
painful  marriage  law  was  capable  of  improvement 
— a  marriage  law  which  necessitates  the  expensive 
safety-valve  of  the  divorce  court — ah!  then  indeed 
Grant  Allen  sinned  the  sin  for  which  there  is  no 
forgiveness  between  the  North  and  the  Irish  Seas. 
Lord  Rosebery  recently  described  us  with  pathetic 
pathos  as  a  little  island  floating  lonely  (and  unpro- 
tected) in  these  Northern  seas,  or  something  simi- 
larly pretty;  so,  indeed,  we  float,  very  lonely,  on  such 
an  important  question  as  the  comfortable  (merely 
comfortable)  relation  of  man  and  woman.  In  all 
that  relates  to  that  we  are  only  less  civilised  than 
the  unspeakably  English  Turk.  We  may  indeed, 
as  Mr.  Meredith  brilliantly  said,  have  passed 
Seraglio  Point,  but  certainly  we  have  not  rounded 
Cape  Turk. 

Grant  Allen  felt  this  limitation  on  the  part  of 
his  countrymen  with  the  acuteness  of  a  sincere  and 
melioristic  mind,  as  two  much  greater  novelists, 
Mr.  Meredith  and  Mr.  Hardy,  not  to  speak  of  any 
number  of  great  poets,  had  felt  it  before  him,  and 
he  determined  to  do  what  he  could  do  to  advance 
a  saner  ideal.  Thus  he  wrote  The  Woman  Who 
Did. 

[i88] 


GRANT   ALLEN 


Grant  Allen  regarded  this  as  the  most  important 
book  he  ever  wrote.  Perhaps,  after  all,  he  was 
right.  I  didn't  think  so  when  I  first  read  it;  for 
it  is  quite  certain  that,  technically  speaking,  it  is 
far  from  being  his  best  novel;  nor,  well  and  some- 
times beautifully  written,  is  it  the  best,  that  is  the 
most  individually,  written  of  his  books.  A  book, 
however,  may  be  a  bad  novel,  it  may  be  indifferently 
written;  and  yet  it  may  be  an  important  book. 
Robert  Elsmere  was,  for  England,  an  important 
book.  Degeneration,  for  all  its  absurdities,  was 
an  important  book.  Neither  book  was  "literature," 
nor  science,  nor  anything  that  mattered  artistically  or 
anywise  technically.  Each  book  was  merely  a  poster 
— a  poster,  a  vivid  advertising  shock  announcing  new 
ideas;  that  is,  not  brand-new  ideas,  not  ideas  that 
had  never  been  heard  of  before  (for  where  shall  we 
find  those  in  historic  times?),  but  ideas  practically 
untried  upon  large  areas  of  mankind,  towards  the 
trial  of  which  the  spirit  of  the  age  seemed  blindly 
to  be  moving.  Its  very  title  declared  The  Woman 
Who  Did  to  be  a  poster  of  rebellion;  and  as  such  it 
was  a  remarkably  conspicuous  success — for,  as  I 
said  on  its  publication,  the  story  was  nought,  the 
characters  were  puppets,  a  philosopher's  puppets; 
yet,  so  momentous  was  the  moral  idea  it  advertised, 
so  single-minded  and  pure-of-heart  was  the  motive 
enthusiasm  of  the  man  who  wrote  it,  that  it  sold  as 
[189] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE     REVIEWS 

though  it  had  been  some  really  interesting  romance 
by  Miss  Marie  CorelU  or  Mr.  Hall  Caine. 

I  do  it,  and  certainly  intend  it,  no  disrespect, 
when  I  speak  of  it  as  the  advertisement  of  an  idea. 
There  is  nothing  that  ideas  need  so  much  as  adver- 
tisement. Grant  Allen  always  had  this  happy 
knack,  by  the  sheer  innocence  of  his  almost  childlike 
sincerity,  of  attracting,  or  shall  I  say,  repelling, 
immediate  attention  for  any  cause  he  cared  to  espouse. 
His  lightest  phrase  sounded  a  gong  which  summoned 
his  fellow-countrymen  to  put  out  with  all  their 
might  the  fire  he  had  just  kindled.  It  mattered 
little  what  it  was  he  talked  of.  He  could  not  avoid 
making  the  poster  phrase,  the  poster  word.  If 
you  seriously  want  to  save  the  world,  you  have  first 
to  make  the  world  hear,  and  secondly  to  make  the 
world  throw  stones.  Grant  Allen  had  a  really 
enviable  faculty  of  provoking  the  world  to  throw 
stones.  He  was  like  a  great  speaker.  However 
unruly  his  audience,  he  had  but  to  raise  a  finger 
of  audacious  phrase,  and,  whatever  happened  after- 
wards, he  was  heard.  Take  a  long-since  tranquil 
theme,  such  as  the  poetry  of  Mr.  William  Watson. 
James  Ashcroft  Noble  knew  it  almost  before  it  was 
born,  he  wrote  of  it,  persuasively  as  he  could  write, 
in  important  journals,  such  as  The  Academy  and 
The  Spectator.  At  one  time  Mr.  Hutton  seemed  to 
edit  The  Spectator  for  the  very  proper  purpose  of 

[  190] 


GRANT   ALLEN 


announcing  the  truly  momentous   presence  in   our 
midst   of   the   author   of   "Wordsworth's    Grave." 
The  present  writer  was  reciting  it  with  inconsiderate 
proselytism  quite  ten  years  ago.     Yet  The  National 
Review,    in    which    it    appeared,    passed    virtually 
unnoticed,  save  by  the  little  band  who  looked  out 
for  it,  knowing  it  was  to  appear.     An  unappreciated 
genius,  ]\Ir.  Watson  wandered  unrecognised  on  the 
Yorkshire  moors.     Then  Grant  Allen  took  up  his 
speaking  trumpet,  modestly  enough,  indeed,  as  he 
always    did,    and    said:     "Let    there    be    William 
Watson,"  and  there  was  William  Watson.     Small 
critics,  who  knew  as  Httle  of  the  poet  as  they  knew 
of  his   trumpeter,  said,  "What  does   Grant  Allen 
know  about  poetry  ?     Grant  Allen,  the  populariser  of 
science,  the  self-confessed  manufacturer  of  shoddy 
fiction."     But  Grant  Allen  had  blown  his  trumpet, 
that  "coarse"  trumpet  of    his,  and    England — in- 
cluding   Lord    Rosebery — heard.     Of  course,  Mr. 
Watson  would  have  been  no  less  a  poet   though 
Grant  Allen  had  never  spoken,  just  as  Armenia  had 
been  Armenia   though  The  Purple  East  had  never 
been  written;  but  it  is,  after  all,  a  pleasant  thing  to 
be  recognised  as  William  Watson  a  little  ahead  of 
posterity's  finding  it  out,  and  I  am  sure  Mr.  Watson 
remembers  with  gratitude  that  the  noble,  forcible,  and 
fascinating  personahty  of  Grant  Allen  was  once  en- 
thusiastically his  very  effective  poster. 

[  19^  ] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

Similarly,  in  regard  to  The  Woman  Who  Did: 
the  ethical  motive  was,  of  course,  familiar  enough — 
old  as  Shelley,  old  as  the  hills.  A  year  or  two 
before  its  publication  Mr.  Meredith  had  published, 
in  Lord  Ormont  and  his  Aminta,  the  sympathetic 
drama  of  similar  revolt,  but  the  Conservative  Press 
which  upholds  the  world — like  the  tortoise  in  the 
Buddhist  cosmogony — had  not  fallen  about  his  ears. 
Mr.  Meredith's  style  is  a  coat  of  mail  which  protects 
the  most  innovating  idea.  But  there  was  a  deeper 
reason  than  that.  England  dreads  the  abstract; 
give  it  plain,  common-sense,  concrete  adultery,  and 
it  will  forgive  and  forget.  But  of  abstract  "adultery" 
— adultery  from  the  highest  ethical  motives — it  is 
suspicious.  And,  of  course,  in  a  sense  it  is  right. 
To  break  a  law  is  one  thing,  to  set  up  that  law- 
breaking  as  a  new  law  is  another.  Of  course,  in 
Lord  Ormont  and  his  Aminta  Mr.  Meredith  did 
that  very  thing.  But  then  you  can  esoterically  ex- 
hibit law-breaking  art  in  the  protective  obscurity  of, 
say,  The  Dudley  Gallery,  which  would  provoke  a 
storm  of  comment  if  placarded,  say,  at  the  Strand 
entrance  to  Waterloo  Bridge.  So  much  depends 
on  where  the  nude  in  truth  is  hung.  Lord  Ormont 
and  his  Aminta  was  merely  one  human  exception — 
in  spite  of  its  author  intending  to  make  a  new  rule; 
The  Woman  Who  Did  announced  an  aggressive  new 
rule.  It  possessed  no  humanity  to  excuse  it.  It  sought 

[  192] 


GR.\NT  ALLEN 


no  excuse.  It  was  intended  as  a  challenge,  and  its 
success  was,  that  it  was  accepted  as  such.  That  it 
should  be  furiously  attacked  was  a  part  of  that 
success.  Otherwise  there  had  been  no  necessity  to 
write  it.  In  form  a  novel,  in  reality  it  belongs  to 
our  noble  series  of  change-demanding  pamphlets. 
As  literature  it  has  small  value,  as  a  brilliant  noise 
on  behalf  of  human  progress  it  means  a  great  deal. 
Perhaps  it  were  as  well  to  explain  that,  while  in 
the  abstract  I  agreed  with  Grant  Allen's  theory  on 
this  matter  long  before  I  knew  Grant  Allen — in 
fact  just  after  I  met  Shelley — later  experience 
of  life  has  led  me  to  doubt  its  practical,  working 
efficiency.  Indeed,  I  am  venturous,  superstitious, 
old-fashioned  enough  to  wonder  if,  at  all  events  for 
certain  natures,  there  is  not  a  more  radical  criticism 
to  be  made  of  those  theories.  Let  us  allow  that  there 
are  happy  natures  constituted  in  the  light  of  reason 
who  can  love  according  to  the  law  which  Grant 
Allen  summarises  in  this  neat  quatrain: — 

"I  hold  that  heart  full  poor  that  owns  its  boast 
To  throb  in  tune  with  I)ut  one  throbbing  breast. 
Who  numbers  many  friends  loves  friendship  most; 
Who  numbers  many  loves  loves  each  love  best." 

I,  too,  thought  so  once,  but  I  have  come  to  realise 
that  what  Grant  Allen  meant  by  love  is  not  in  the 
real  sense — that  is  the  absurd,  the  tragic,  the  comic, 
the  mystic — sense,  love  at  all.     He  really  spoke  of 

13  I  '93] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

a  sort  of  sexual  comradeship.  Love  is  something 
far  more  terrible.  It  has  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  reason,  nothing  to  do  with  theories.  It  burns 
this  way,  it  burns  that.  But  the  flame  it  sets  alight 
is  for  one  martyr,  it  is  kindled  by  one  torch. 

Indeed,  as  I  ventured  sometimes  to  tell  him,  there 
is  something  in  human  life,  in  human  nature,  which 
I  think  Grant  Allen  rather  missed;  something  mystic, 
something  divinely  and  devilishly  irrational  which 
he  did  not  take  into  account  in  his  meHoristic  dreams. 
Of  course,  it  is  the  way  of  all  moralists,  and  Grant 
Allen  was  a  moralist,  par  excellence.  Packed  full 
of  humanity  himself,  he  never  realised  what  one 
can  only  call  the  elaborate  waywardness  of  human 
nature.  He  thought  of  humanity  too  much  in  the 
abstract.  He  thought  of  it  as  composed  of  human 
beings  amenable  to  reason,  ductible  to  ideals. 
Being  himself  a  nature  singularly  adaptable  to  the 
influence  of  right  thinking,  he  imagined  that  the 
rest  of  the  world  was  like  him.  Of  course  he  knew, 
but  in  his  utopianism  he  hardly  remembered  suffi- 
ciently, that  the  influence  of  ideas  on  humanity 
is  exceedingly  slow  and  laborious  and  indeed  super- 
ficial. To  see  the  right  was  with  him  to  do  it.  To 
see  the  wrong  in  his  own  nature  was  at  least  to 
struggle  to  set  it  right.  His,  in  fact,  was  a  nature 
singularly  conformable  to  moral  ideas.  But  average 
human  nature  is  not.  It  sees  the  right,  but  its 
[  194] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


warm  life-forces  compel  it  to  do  the  wrong.  As 
Grant  Allen  once  wittily  said  of  a  friend,  humanity 
"longs  to  be  a  saint,  but  it  loves  to  be  a  sinner." 
I  think  it  was  this  in  Grant  Allen  which  closed 
his  eyes  to  the  beauty  of  London.  The  beauty  of 
London,  if  one  may  say  so,  is  the  beauty  of  a  richly- 
coloured  meerschaum.  It  smells  rankly  of  old 
romantic  sin.  With  its  freakish  rings  of  rich  brown, 
it  is,  side  by  side  with  a  nice  clean  new  meerschaum, 
a  disgrace.  Life  has  had  its  way  with  it,  and  it 
is  coloured  accordingly.  Now,  I  think  I  do  him 
no  wrong  when  I  say  that  Grant  Allen  rather  loved 
the  new  meerschaum.  I  don't  think  he  would 
have  cared  much  to  live,  say,  in  an  old  historic  house. 
At  every  turn  it  would  have  reminded  him  of  wrong 
thinking,  of  crushing  social  wrong.  He  could  never 
have  slept  in  it.  The  "monopolist  instincts"  would 
have  shrieked  about  his  bed  at  night.  He  loved  the 
beauty  of  new-made  things,  life  washed  clean  in  the 
dawn;  and  I  am  far  from  implying  that  he  was 
anything  but  right  in  so  doing.  The  beauty  of 
antiquity  was,  I  imagine,  to  his  way  of  thinking — 
partly  dirt  and  partly  superstition:  of  course,  I 
mean  mere  age,  that  is  the  humanisation  which 
comes  to  anything  through  mere  use.  I  am  hardly 
writing  for  a  reader  who  needs  to  be  told  of  his 
ap])reciation,  his  exceptionally  intuitive  interpre- 
tation, of    the    definitely,    demonstrably,    beautiful 

[195] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

things  of  antiquity.  His  knowledge  of  and  insight 
into  the  Italian  painters  of  the  Renaissance  is  well 
known,  and  I  have  had  few  more  fascinating  expe- 
riences than  hearing  him  expound  his  original 
interpretation  of  the  symbolism  of,  say,  Botticelli's 
Primavera:  a  picture,  indeed,  sufficiently  hackneyed 
to  provide  opportunity  for  a  tour  de  force  of  original 
exposition. 

The  fact  remains  that  Grant  Allen  loved  human 
ideals  more  than  human  realities — as,  indeed,  we 
all  should  do,  but  do  not.  This  ideaUty  accounts 
for  the  unreality — as  fiction — of  such  books  as  The 
Woman  Who  Did;  but,  at  the  same  time,  it  is  nothing 
against  their  usefulness  as  brilliant  and  forcible 
social  tracts.  To  write  a  really  influential  tract — 
well,  what  novel  since  that  lovely  tract  of  Tess  of 
the  UUrbervilles  is  worth  mentioning  beside  such 
an  achievement? 


IV 


I  am  thus  insidiously  led  up  to  Grant  Allen's 
novels  without  a  purpose.  Of  these  I  propose  to 
say  little — for  a  good  reason.  On  entering  into 
friendship  with  Grant  Allen  it  was  obligatory  to 
make  one  promise  only:  never,  under  whatsoever 
temptation,  to  read  one  of  his  "commercial"  novels. 
I  feel  myself  no  little  unworthy  as  I  think  that  my 
[196] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


poor  human  nature  proved  incapable  of  strictly 
fulfilling  this  condition.  And,  indeed,  I  must  not 
forget  Grant  Allen  made  one  exception:  For 
Maimie's  Sake.  This  was  an  earlier  illustration  of 
The  Woman  Who  Did  idea;  and,  though  there  is 
much  that  Grant  Allen  wrote  that  I  prefer  to  it,  I 
admit  that  in  "  Maimie  "  he  outhned  a  type  of  original 
interest,  and  indeed  created  the  only  living  woman 
in  his  books.  For,  indeed,  in  no  study  so  much  as 
that  of  woman  would  his  passion  for  the  abstract 
so  absolutely  unfit  him  to  arrive  at  reality.  Man 
may  be  imperfectly  amenable  to  rule,  but  every 
woman  is  an  exception.  Woman,  indeed,  is  human 
nature. 

I  once  meditated  an  appreciation  of  Grant  Allen's 
"pot-boilers,"  which  only  accident  prevented  my 
carrying  out;  and  I  am  afraid,  unintentionally  in- 
deed, that  I  hurt  him  by  saying  that  his  current  "  pot- 
boiler," Under  Sealed  Orders,  was  a  much  better 
novel  than  The  Woman  Who  Did.  Some  day  I  may 
fulfil  my  old  intention,  and  I  think  I  should  not  find 
it  difficult  to  prove  that  Grant  Allen  was  a  far  better 
novelist  than   he  had  the  smallest  interest  in  being. 

As  a  teller  of  the  short  story  he  is  admitted  to  have 
been  a  brilliant  pioneer.  It  was  an  appropriate  co- 
incidence that  very  shortly  before  his  death  he  should 
have  published  a  selection  of  twelve  of  the  most  im- 
portant of  his  tales,  with  a  characteristic  confession  of 

[^97] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

how  he  came  to  be  a  story-teller  at  all.  Of  course,  he 
was  a  born  story-teller;  but,  as  all  gifts  are  the  revela- 
tion of  accident,  it  was  the  accident  of  his  having 
thrown  a  scientific  idea  into  the  form  of  a  story  that 
revealed  Grant  Allen's  story-telling  both  to  himself 
and  to  the  world.  His  best  stories  always  bore  the 
mark  of  this  accidental  origin.  They  were  always  the 
illustration  of  some  scientific  or  moral  conceptions: 
from  the  famous  The  Reverend  John  Creedy  to  The 
Woman  Who  Did.  But  their  success  was  that  they 
lost  nothing  in  narrative  interest  on  that  account. 
The  Child  of  the  Plmlanstery,  Ivan  Greefs  Master- 
piece, are  both,  so  to  speak,  allegorical  in  intention; 
but,  all  the  same,  they  hold  and  move  one  just  as  if 
they  were  the  simplest  emotional  stories,  and  not  in 
the  least  the  attractive  envelope  of  an  ethical  pill. 
Besides,  sheerly  as  story-telling,  some  of  Grant 
Allen's  stories  qualify  him  as  an  inventor.  The 
Reverend  John  Creedy,  Mr.  Chung,  and  many  other 
such  stories,  justify  his  timid  enough  claim  to  be  one 
of  the  earliest  writers  of  "the  romance  of  the  clash 
of  civilisations."  He  used  sometimes  to  say  that, 
misspent  as  his  life  had  been,  he  was  the  maker 
of  the  phrase  "gone  Fantee."  With  touching 
humility,  in  the  preface  to  that  collection  of  Twelve 
Tales  just  referred  to,  he  mentions  with  character- 
istic (let  one  say  for  him,  absurd)  deference  "the 
Kiplings,"  the  "Wellses":  "I  shall  be  amply  con- 
[198] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


tent  if  our  masters  permit  me  to  pick  up  the  crumbs 
that  fall  from  the  table  of  the  Hardys,  the  Kiplings, 
the  Merediths,  and  the  Wellses." 

I  have  nothing  to  say  to  ''the  Hardys"  and  "the 
Merediths,"  except  to  protest  against  a  somewhat 
hasty  use  of  the  plural.  But  "the  Kiplings"  and 
"the  Wellses"!  Well,  I  kow-tow  (as  Grant  Allen 
would  say)  to  those  brilliant  writers  with  all  my 
heart — but  to  be  able  to  tell  a  tale  better  than 
Grant  Allen,  that  is  to  go  one  better  than  one's 
tutor,  does  not  prove  one  a  more  important  person 
than  Grant  Allen,  "No  talent  can  be  supremely 
eflfective,"  said  that  very  clear-sighted  observer, 
George  Henry  Lewes,  "  unless  it  act  in  close  alliance 
with  certain  moral  qualities."  "Art"  is  only  of  su- 
preme importance  when  it  is  either  the  embodiment 
of  that  beauty  which  is  the  final  unquestionable 
holiness,  or  when  it  is  the  voice  of  the  universal 
absolutes  of  man.  To  be  "diabolically  clever" 
is  not  the  same  thing.  To  cinematograph  the  past, 
or  to  cinematograph  the  present,  is  nothing  like 
so  important  as— to  pray  with  all  your  heart  for  the 
future.  Prayer  is  usually  allowed  to  be  exempt 
from  minor  aesthetic  criticism. 

And  this  leads  me  to  speak  of  a  little  volume  which 
must  certainly  not  go  uncelebrated  here,  and  which, 
in  the  whole  enormous  library  of  Grant  Allen's 
writings,  has  a  more  important  place  than  has  yet 

[  ^  99  ] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

been  allowed  to  it,  or  than  he  himself  would  have 
claimed  for  it,  the  little  volume  of  his  poems  quaintly 
entitled :  The  Lower  Slopes,  Reminiscences  of  Excur- 
sions round  the  Base  of  Helicon,  undertaken  for  the 
most  part  in  early  manhood.  If  it  contained  no 
other  poem  than  this  striking  "Prayer,"  it  would 
have  a  sufficient  raison  d'etre: 

"A  crowned  Caprice  is  god  of  this  world; 
On  his  stony  breast  are  his  white  wings  furled. 
No  ear  to  listen,  no  eye  to  see, 
No  heart  to  feel  for  a  man  hath  he. 

"But  his  pitiless  arm  is  swift  to  smite; 
And  his  mute  lips  utter  one  word  of  might, 
'Mid  the  clash  of  gentler  souls  and  rougher, 
'Wrong  must  thou  do,  or  wrong  must  suffer.' 
Then  grant,  O  dumb,  blind  god,  at  least  that  we 
Rather  the  sufferers  than  the  doers  be." 

I  was  glad  to  see  that  Mr.  Lang,  in  a  beautiful, 
so  to  say,  playfully  elegiac,  article  a  propos  Grant 
Allen's  death,  referred  to  him  as  "a  sad  good 
Christian."  I  too  had  ventured  to  write  that,  hke 
Shelley,  he  was  all  his  life  a  Christian  without  know- 
ing it.  Certainly  his  nature  was  filled  with  a  pity 
which  in  the  depth  of  his  tenderness  was  distinctly 
"Christian."  His  favourite  motto  was  "Self-devel- 
opment is  greater  than  self-sacrifice  " ;  but,  when  one 
remembers  the  deliberate  way  in  which  he  sacrificed 
all  his  literary  and  scientific  dreams  to  the  domestic 
[  200  ] 


GRAXT   ALLEN 


ideal,  and  preached  constantly  in  Ms  stories  that 
a  man  with  a  wife  and  children  must  be  husband 
or  father  first  and  artist  afterwards — one  reahses 
that,  when  his  abstract  theories  were  put  to  the 
human  test,  Grant  Allen  considered  first  the  human 
need  in  the  situation  and  last  of  all  his  theories. 
IMoraUst  as  he  was,  he  was  far  indeed  from  being 
a  doctrinaire. 

Recently,  re-reading  some  of  his  old  articles, 
I  came  upon  a  characteristic  touch  of  his  pity  in 
a  quaintly  unexpected  place:  a  review  of  Steven- 
son's Travels  with  a  Donkey.  Grant  Allen  was 
even  then  generously  "discovering"  other  people. 
It  is  to  be  feared  that  the  jesting  thanks  of  one 
of  his  protegees  too  often  came  true:  "Need  I  say 
that  you  have  earned  my  blackest  ingratitude?" 
"There  is  many  a  true  word  spoken  in  jest,"  was 
Grant  Allen's  quiet  comment  on  the  occasion.  But, 
to  return  to  Stevenson,  after  praising  the  book  for  its 
various  now  classical  qualities.  Grant  Allen  concludes 
thus:  "Nevertheless,  since  one  cannot  wholly  divorce 
one's  self  from  the  ethical  feeling  of  one's  age,  I  must 
confess  that  I  should  have  liked  Mr.  Stevenson  better 
if  he  had  beaten  his  donkey  less  unmercifully,  and, 
above  all,  if  he  had  not  used  that  wooden  goad, 
with  its  eighth  of  an  inch  of  pin.  This  is  not  the 
place  to  discuss  the  broad  question  of  'no  morality 
in  art':  but  most  Englishmen  will  perhaps  feel 
[201] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

pained  rather  than  amused  by  the  description  of 
poor  Modestine's  many  stripes,  or  of  her  foreleg  'no 
better  than  raw  beef  on  the  inside. '  "  Grant  Allen 
was  unlike  his  younger  contemporaries  in  being 
unable  to  enjoy  cruelty.  He  could  not  enjoy  cruelty 
in  any  form,  not  even  in  a  book. 

"  Why  should  a  sob 

For  the  vaguest  smart 
One  moment  throb 
Through  the  tiniest  heart?" 

he  indignantly  exclaims  in  a  poem  in  which,  d. 
propos  a  moth  in  a  candle  flame,  he  arraigns  the 
devil  of  pain  in  the  universe. 

Mr.  Lang  has  spoken  of  Grant  Allen  as  "a  master 
of  the  ballade,"  and  to  illustrate  how  successfully 
he  could  wield  the  more  stately  measures  of  English 
verse,  I  may  quote  these  two  verses  from  his  line 
Arnoldian  meditation.  In  Magdalen  Tower: — 

"  This  very  tree,  whose  life  is  our  life's  sister, 

We  know  not  if  the  ichor  in  her  veins 
Thrill  with  fierce  joy  when  April  dews  have  kissed  her 

Or  shrink  in  anguish  from  October  rains. 
We  search  the  mighty  world  above  and  under, 

Yet  nowhere  find  the  soul  we  fain  would  find, 
Speech  in  the  hollow  rumbling  of  the  thunder, 

Words  in  the  whispering  wind. 

"  We  yearn  for  brotherhood  with  lake  and  mountain, 

Our  conscious  soul  seeks  conscious  sympathy, 

1  202  ] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


Nymphs  in  the  coppice,  Naiads  in  the  fountain, 
Gods  on  the  craggy  height  and  roaring  sea. 

We  find  but  soulless  sec^ucnces  of  matter, 
Fact  linked  to  fact  by  adamantine  rods, 

Eternal  bonds  of  former  sense  and  latter, 
Dead  laws  for  living  gods." 

Grant  Allen's,  too,  was  the  happy  characterisation 
of  FitzGerald's  Omar  as  "This  rose  of  Iran  on  an 
English  stock."  But  I  must  quote  no  more  from 
a  little  book  which  easily  proves  that  Grant  Allen, 
while  he  was,  what  is  still  more  important,  a  poet 
in  the  larger  sense,  in  temperament,  in  prose,  was 
also  a  skilful  and  forcible  poet  in  verse. 


In  fact,  he  was,  perhaps,  the  most  variously  gifted 
man  of  letters  of  his  time.  Sheerly  as  a  literary 
workman,  he  can  seldom  have  been  equalled.  His 
capacity  for  working  under  every  disadvantage  of 
circumstance  was  almost  superhuman,  as  his  obe- 
dient adaptability  to  the  demands  of  the  public 
or  the  publishers  by  whom  he  had  to  live,  was  as 
astonishing  as  it  was  tragic.  When,  to  his  surprise, 
as  he  tells  in  his  preface  to  the  Twelve  Tales  already 
referred  to,  Mr.  Chatto  asked  him  to  write  stories, 
he  characteristically  tells  how:  "Not  a  little  sur- 
prised at  this  request,  I  sat  down  like  an  obedient 
[203] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

workman,  and  tried  to  write  one  at  my  employer's 
bidding." 

Similarly,  on  a  larger  scale,  when  Sir  George 
Newnes  offered  a  thousand  pounds  for  a  sensational 
novel,  he  produced  Whafs  Bred  in  the  Bone  with 
cynical  cleverness.  That  a  man  of  his  cahbre  should 
have  been  compelled  thus  to  prostitute  gifts  so  impor- 
tant, however  brave  and  laughing  a  face  he  put  upon 
it,  is  one  of  the  saddest  things  in  recent  literary 
history,  as  it  is  eloquent  once  more  of  the  cruel 
indifference  to  the  arduous  conditions  of  literary 
creation  in  a  country  which,  nevertheless,  plumes 
itself  particularly  upon  its  noble  literature.  But 
that  he  was  able  to  do  it  so  brilliantly  will,  doubtless, 
be  the  feature  of  the  case  which  will  most  fill  the 
down-trodden  literary  mind  with  envy. 

In  the  mere  mechanical — but  how  important — 
matter  of  "turning  out"  his  "copy"  he  was  quite 
amazing.  Anyone  who  has  stayed  in  his  house 
will  remember  how  his  typewriter  could  be  heard,  as 
you  crossed  the  hall,  punctually  beginning  to  click 
at  nine  every  morning,  and,  if  you  eavesdropped, 
you  would  seldom  note  a  pause  in  its  rapid  clicking. 
I  don't  think  that  Grant  Allen  can  even  once  in  his 
Hfe  have  "stopped  for  a  word."  Interruptions  made 
no  difference.  I  have  known  him  stop  in  the 
middle  of  a  sentence  at  the  sound  of  the  luncheon 
gong,  and  then,  having  found  on  repairing  to  the 
[  204] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


dining-room  that  the  gong  was  a  Kttle  premature, 
go  back  to  his  typewriter,  finish  the  sentence  and 
begin  another.  Like  all  men  who  do  much  in 
this  world,  he  had  a  genius  for  using  up  remnants 
of  time.  He  had,  too,  an  almost  Gladstonian 
power  of  concentration.  Whatever  was  going  on, 
he  could  write  if  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to. 
I  think  that  the  only  thing  that  ever  worried  him 
was  a  picture  askew  or  a  pot  out  of  its  place.  He 
couldn't  be  happy  till  he  had  set  that  right.  Other- 
wise, however,  most  things  could  happen  without 
their  interfering  with  the  strong  current  of  his 
thought  bent  on  expressing  itself.  One  reminiscence 
to  the  point  I  always  recall  when  I  think  of  him 
in  this  connection.  Some  five  years  ago  I  was 
domiciled  in  his  house  for  many  weeks.  I  was 
there  because  Grant  Allen  and  his  brave  and 
beautiful  wife  had  taken  to  heart  a  private  sorrow 
of  mine,  with  a  personal  sympathy  such  as  few 
friends  are  capable  of.  There  were  days  when  I 
didn't  feel  quite  equal  to  the  journalism  I  had 
undertaken  to  do;  and  I  remember  that,  on  one  of 
them,  Grant  Allen  offered  to  write  a  brief  review 
for  me.  If  I  remember  rightly,  the  book  was  that 
which  first  revealed  to  us  the  charming  personality  of 
Miss  Fiona  Maclcod — Pharais.  It  chanced,  too, 
that  on  this  particular  day  certain  other  friends  were 
staying  in  the  house,  friends  who  were  interested  to 
I  205] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 


see  Grant  Allen  use  his  typewriter.     Some  five  of  us 
gathered  round  him  as  he  sat  down  to  it.     "  Well," 
he  said,  "what  shall  I  write?     Oh,  I  might  as  well 
write  that  review"— and  off  he  went,  and  in  some- 
thing like  ten  minutes  he  had  written  five  hundred 
bright  pointed  words,  for  which  Miss  Fiona  Macleod 
must,  I  am  sure,  have  been  very  grateful,  and  which 
she  will  no  doubt  admire  all  the  more  for  this  con- 
fession of  their  true  authorship.     Perhaps  I  may 
be  allowed  to  add,  as  a  journalist  who  has  still  to 
go  on  earning  many  loaves,  that  reviews  signed  by 
my  name  are  not  usually  written  by  anyone  more 
distinguished    than    myself.     But    I    recalled    this 
incident  only  to  illustrate  Grant  Allen's    capacity 
for    working    brilliantly    under    all    circumstances. 
There  were  we  five  people  bending  over  him,  but  he 
thought  absolutely  nothing  about  us.     He  was  busy 
with   "the   Celtic   movement,"   and   something   he 
wanted  to  say  about  it.      We    were  hardly  phan- 
tasmagoria. 

So  I  come  to  the  man  himself,  to  the  personal 
loss.  That  loss  needs  an  elegy  for  its  expression. 
Nowadays  we  write  our  elegies  in  the  form  of 
hurried  leading  articles,  and  perhaps  such  a  column 
of  valedictory  prose  as  Mr.  Lang's  column  in  the 
Daily  News  is  a  more  real  expression  of  loss  than 
that  artistic  sorrow  remembered  in  tranquillity  which 
elaborates  an  In  Memoriam.  When  the  wreath  is 
[206] 


GRANT  ALLEN 


so  magnificent,  one  is  apt  to  forget  our  sorrow  in  our 
aesthetic  self-gratulation  over  our  wreath. 

Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  in  his  funeral  oration, 
laid  stress,  over  and  over  again,  as  I  was  glad 
to  note,  on  two  elements  of  Grant  Allen's  character: 
his  courage  and  his  "militant  sincerity."  Yes, 
the  courage  hidden  in  that  frail  frame  of  his  was 
almost  pathetic;  and  he  was  certainly  the  sinccrest 
man  I  have  ever  known.  He  possessed  the  simple 
truthfulness  of  genius,  and  perhaps  one  might  say 
more  particularly,  of  scientific  genius.  It  is  the 
business  of  the  man  of  science  to  tell  the  truth;  it 
is  his  raison  (Tetre.  He  is  so  concerned  to  "find 
out"  that  he  never  conceives  that  there  can  be  any 
necessity  to  conceal.  That  is  why  he  so  often  shocks 
his  fellows — in  the  pure  innocence  of  discovery. 
I  don't  think,  as  I  have  said  elsewhere,  that  Grant 
Allen  ever  had  an  arriere  pensee  in  his  life.  He 
never  reaUsed  the  necessity  of  the  social  lie,  or  any 
other  form  of  dissimulation.  Some  of  us  more 
worldly-wise,  and  thus  on  a  lower  level  than  he, 
would  sometimes  protest,  on  his  own  behalf,  against 
his  extreme  open-mindedness  on  such  matters  as 
the  commercial  disabilities  of  telHng  the  truth. 
He  was,  of  course,  in  the  main  a  financial  sucess, 
but  there  was  a  brief  period  after  The  Woman  Who 
Did  when  publishers  and  editors  fought  shy  of  him; 
and  during  that  period  he  would  confide  to  any 
I  207] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

afternoon  caller,  with  perfect  simplicity,  and  not 
the  smallest  sense  of  "martyrdom,"  that  he  stood 
idle  in  the  market-place,  because  no  one  dared  to 
hire  him.  I  have  heard  him  say  frankly  to  a  certain 
young  writer,  during  an  interchange  of  "shop": 
"Why  I  never  received  so  much  for  a  novel  in  my 
life!  "  Yet  he  was  very  well  paid,  as  literary  pay- 
ment goes.  Any  one  who  cares  can  share  his  printed 
confidences  in  this  matter,  and  enjoy  an  excellent  ex- 
ample of  his  style  in  his  old  Idler  article  on  "My 
First  Book,"  since  reprinted,  with  other  confessions, 
by  Messrs.  Chatto  and  Windus.  It  ends  with  this 
now-famous  advice:  "Don't  take  to  literature  if 
you've  capital  enough  in  hand  to  buy  a  good  broom, 
and  energy  enough  to  annex  a  vacant  crossing." 

Grant  Allen  was  too  great  to  tell  lies,  even  white 
lies.  He  never  reahsed  the  necessity.  He  could 
compromise  to  the  extent  of  doing  brilliantly  the 
work  he  hated,  but  more  he  would  not  do.  No 
necessity,  no  torture,  would  have  persuaded  him 
to  deny,  or  suppress,  the  truth  that  was  in  him. 
He  might  write  of  something  else,  but  whenever 
he  was  obliged  to  write  of  vital  matters,  whatever 
it  cost  him,  he  told  the  truth. 

Also,  he  was,  I  think,  the  most  completely  "  eman- 
cipated" of  any  recent  English  mind  expressing 
itself  in  literature.  I  never  observed  a  trace  of 
that  succumbing  to  the  inherited  habits  of  thought 
[208] 


GR.\NT   ALLEN 


and  feeling  which  even  the  most  "advanced" 
tliinkers  have  developed  towards  the  close  of  life. 
He  was  entirely  devoid  of  any  form  of  "  superstition." 
His  reason  was,  to  the  last,  master  of  the  house  of 
life.  Perhaps  he  saw  a  little  too  clearly;  for,  as 
his  most  famous  protegee  writes: — 

"They  see  not  clearliest 
Who  see  all  things  clear." 

Perhaps  Grant  Allen  too  confidently  set  up  Darwin 
and  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  in  the  place  of  liis  lost 
Hebrew  prophets.  There  is,  as  I  said  above,  some- 
thing mystic  in  human  life  that  he  refused  to  consider. 
With  the  presumptuous  flamboyance  of  youth  I 
sometimes  told  him  so.  Yet,  at  the  same  time, 
no  one  had  such  an  overwhelming  cosmic  sense 
of  the  wonder  of  the  universe.  Perhaps  his  wonder 
in  presence  of  that  appalling  spectacle  dwarfed 
his  appreciation  of  the  greater  mystery  of  the  soul 
of  man.  The  brilliant  organisation  of  the  universe, 
perhaps,  a  little  distracted  him  from  the  human 
miracle.  I  wish  I  could  borrow  his  phonographic 
memory  to  record  a  spoken  rhapsody  of  his  of 
the  wonder,  not  of  the  world,  but  of  the  worlds, 
gently  directed  at  me,  one  evening,  in  answer  to 
some  absurd  boyish  criticism  of  his  way  of  thought. 
I  remember  it  only  as  music — as  I  remember  most 
of  his  talk. 

14  I  209  ] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

And  what  an  amazing  talker  he  was!  No  pose- 
talk,  but  talk  easily  born  of  his  knowledge  and  love 
of  the  subject  that  at  the  moment  occupied  him. 
No  more  brilliant  generaliser  can  ever  have  lived. 
Present  him  with  the  most  unexpected  fact,  or  the 
most  complex  set  of  circumstances  (as  it  might 
seem  to  you),  and  he  had  his  theory  in  an  instant, 
and  was  making  it  as  clear,  by  the  aid  of  his  marvel- 
lously copious  and  exact  vocabulary,  as  though  he 
had  drawn  it  on  the  air.  And  bright  things  by  the 
score  all  the  way!  His  gift  of  stating  the  most 
intricate  matter  impromptu  in  a  few  simple  words,  and 
of  pouring  out  the  most  varied  and  profound  learn- 
ing as  though  he  were  teUing  a  fairy  tale,  can  hardly 
have  been  equalled,  and  certainly  can  never  have 
been  surpassed. 

Well,  we  shall  "look  it  up  in  Grant"  no  more. 
The  swallows  he  loved  to  see  flying  in  and  out  from 
the  eaves  of  his  beautiful  house  at  Hindhead  will 
come  back,  but  he  will  come  back  no  more.  The 
nightjar,  his  favourite  bird,  will  perch  near  the 
windows  at  twilight  with  its  hoarse,  sad,  churring 
cry,  but  Grant  Allen  will  hear  it  no  more.  All  the 
goodness,  the  humour,  the  tenderness,  the  imagina- 
tion, the  intellect,  the  brilliance,  the  love  and  laughter 
that  were  Grant  Allen  are  now  a  little  dust. 

At  his  funeral  I  had  in  my  pocket  his  little  volume 
of  poems,  and,  as  we  turned  away  from  the  sad 
[210] 


GRANT   ALLEN 


place  where  we  had  left  him,  two  of  his  beautiful 
lines  were  murmuring  in  my  mind: — 

"  Perchance  a  little  light  will  come  with  morning, 
Perchance  I  shall  but  sleep." 

Perchance ! 

October,  1899. 


[211] 


II 

TENNYSON 

(1809- 1 909) 

FEW  poets  have  bequeathed  to  time  a  figure 
of  themselves  so  dramatically  satisfying  as 
Alfred  Tennyson.  In  his  personality,  in 
his  history,  as  in  his  work,  he  was  the  impressive, 
romantic  embodiment  of  "the  sacred  poet,"  the 
laurelled  priest  of  the  muses,  the  hieratic  voice  and 
interpreter  of  the  mystic  beauty  of  the  world,  and 
the  immortal  oracles  of  life.  The  dramatic  sense 
of  humanity  very  naturally  demands  of  its  divine 
ministers  a  certain  nimbus  and  authority  proper 
to  their  mysterious  callings.  They  must  in  them- 
selves be  symbols  of  the  work  they  do.  The  great 
soldier  must  look  like  a  great  soldier,  the  great  priest 
look  like  a  great  priest,  the  great  poet  wear  the  grand 
manner,  the  rapt,  exalted,  dream-wrought  air  of 
the  great  poet.  Most  great  poets  have  fulfilled  this 
popular  condition,  or,  by  the  mythopoeic  action 
of  time,  have  come  to  fulfil  it.  But  none  has 
w^orn  his  laurel  with  a  more  august  fitness,  as  of  a 
man  apart,  a  chosen  messenger  of  the  unseen  gods, 
than  Alfred  Tennyson.  While  he  lived  we  had  a 
feeling  that,  so  to  say,  a  personal  representative  of 
[  2x2] 


TENNYSON 


Apollo  dwelt  among  us,  an  authentic  vates,  touched, 
as  it  were,  with  a  certain  supernatural  distinction; 
and,  we  said  to  ourselves,  with  Mr.  Lang,  "  The  mas- 
ter's yonder  in  the  isle  " — with  a  haunted  sense  of 
the  immortal  made  flesh  and  housed  with  us,  a  sense, 
too,  of  the  security  of  divine  interests  in  a  material 
age.  With  his  death  that  sense  of  security  seemed 
to  vanish,  and  it  seemed,  indeed,  to  us,  as  to  Tenny- 
son himself  on  the  death  of  Byron  years  before,  that 
poetry,  too,  was  dead.  "Byron  is  dead,"  he  had 
carved  on  a  rock  at  Somersby  that  April  day  in  1824, 
"a  day  when  the  whole  world  seemed  to  be  darkened 
for  me."  Years  after,  his  son,  visiting  the  old  Lin- 
colnshire home,  sought  for  the  inscription,  but  in 
vain.  One  can  imagine  few  inscriptions  one  would 
care  more  to  have  had  preserved.  "  Byron  is  dead," 
carv^ed  the  boy  of  fourteen,  little  dreaming  of  a  day 
far  off  in  the  future  years  when,  "  to  the  noise  of  the 
mourning  of  a  mighty  nation,"  his  own  funeral 
would  seem  a  bereavement  no  less  final. 

"Carry  the  last  great  bard  to  his  last  bed,"  sang 
Mr.  William  Watson,  as  they  brought  Alfred 
Tennyson  to  his  place  of  honoured  rest,  with 
Chaucer  and  Browning  for  his  immortal  neighbours. 

Who  that  was  there  will  ever  forget  that  morn- 
ing in  Westminster  Abbey,  the  ineffable,  sweet 
solemnity  of  the  beautiful  death  music,  as,  to  the 
ethereal  singing  of  his  own   "Silent  Voices,"  the 

[  213] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 


great  coffin,  wreathed  with  laurel  from  Virgil's  tomb, 
was  carried  in  by  illustrious  friends,  friends  whose 
names  also  were  even  then  becoming  legendary — 
Froude  and  Jowett  and  Lecky  and  Kelvin.  At  the 
dead  man's  side,  beneath  the  laurels  and  the  roses, 
lay,  as  we  knew,  the  copy  of  "Cymbeline"  on  which 
his  eyes  had  last  rested  in  the  moonlight  a  few  nights 
before,  and  the  whole  beautiful  rite  was  one  of  those 
perfect  happenings  which  have  a  dream-like  com- 
pleteness, the  inner  spiritual  significance  and  the 
outer  form  combining  in  a  harmony  of  proud  pathos 
indescribably  impressive.  Here  was  the  majesty  of 
the  poet's  lot,  as  our  boyish  fancies  have  dreamed 
it,  visibly  attested.  Here  was  noble  Fame  visibly 
embodied  with  a  sacred  eloquence  that  thrilled  the 
heart.  This  it  was  to  be  a  great  poet,  the  voice  of 
a  nation's  soul — 

The  song  that  nerves  a  nation's  heart 
Is  in  itself  a  deed. 

That  early  vision  of  his  of  the  grandeur  of  the 
poet's  destiny  was  here  finally  fulfilled— here  one 
might  see,  veritably  witnessed  by  a  nation's  mourn- 
ing, how  "one  poor  poet's  scroll"  had  in  very  deed 
shaken  the  world.  Yes,  it  was  a  legendary  morning, 
the  beautiful  legendary  close  to  a  legendary  life.  It 
was  good  to  be  there — an  inspiring  reminder  to  what 
fine  issues  our  mortal  lives  ascend. 
[  214] 


TENNYSON 


And  the  life  thus  closed  had  been,  from  its  begin- 
ning, lived  in  the  spirit  of  one  chosen.  No  English 
poet,  save  Milton,  has  felt  himself  so  "dedicated" 
as  Alfred  Tennyson.  Always  with  him,  as  with  his 
master,  Virgil,  it  was, — the  sweet  Muses  whom,  be- 
fore all  things,  I  serve! 

Me  vero  primum  dukes  ante  omnia  Mus£e, 
Quarum  sacra  fero  ingenti  percussus  amore, 
Accipiant,  cfelique,  vias  et  sidera  monstrent, 
Defectus  solis  varies  lun^eque  labores.  .  .  . 

And  it  is  beautiful,  too,  to  remember  how,  from 
the  first,  his  family  and  friends  had  accepted  him, 
confirmed  him  in  his  high  calling.  Poetry  was 
very  much  in  the  Tennyson  family.  His  father  and 
his  brothers  were  all  more  or  less  poets — good  poets, 
too, — but  Alfred  was  the  poet  in  whose  fame  they 
proudly  sank  their  own  individual  ambitions.  "I 
make  a  slave  of  you,"  said  the  old  man  to  his  son 
Hallam,  as  he  asked  some  service  of  him  on  his 
death-bed;  and,  indeed,  the  poetic  gift  has  seldom 
blossomed  into  an  environment  so  hospitable  to 
its  nurture.  Tennyson  knew  nothing  of  the  stern 
apprenticeship  which  falls  to  most  poets,  and  it 
may  be  that  his  super-sensitiveness  to  criticism,  of 
which  so  many  c^uaint  stories  are  told,  was  due  in 
some  measure  to  the  sheltered  conditions  of  his 
muse. 

[215] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

George  Meredith  used  to  tell  a  story  of  his  paying 
a  visit  to  Tennyson  at  the  height  of  his  fame,  he, 
Meredith,  being  a  young  man,  with  a  very  different 
road  in  front  of  him.  After  breakfast,  they  had 
gone  out  for  a  walk  over  the  downs  together,  and 
Meredith  had  looked  forward  to  some  personal  talk 
with  his  great  companion.  But,  alas!  the  morning 
mail  had  brought  some  small  criticism  by  some 
unimportant  criticaster,  and  Tennyson  could  not 
forget  his  irritation.  Withdrawn  into  his  own  gloom, 
he  kept  repeating  to  himself,  rolling  the  words  out  in 
his  deep,  sonorous  voice:  "Apollodorus  says  I  am 
not  a  great  poet!  " 

Meredith  ventured  to  suggest  that  the  opinion 
of  "Apollodorus"  was  of  no  possible  importance, 
anyhow;  but  it  was  in  vain,  and  the  deep  voice  still 
continued  with  its  refrain:  "Apollodorus  says  I  am 
not  a  great  poet" — for  Tennyson  seems  to  have 
resembled  his  hero  Byron  in  this  respect,  that 
(Byron's  own  confession)  "the  praise  of  the  greatest 
could  not  take  from  him  the  sting  from  the  censure 
of  the  meanest." 

It  was  an  uncomfortable  weakness,  and  hard  to 
understand  in  one  who,  since  the  pubUcation  of  those 
precious  two  volumes  in  his  thirty-fourth  year,  had 
been  so  securely  seated,  and  amid  such  universal 
acclamation,  in  his  own  high  place.  Seldom,  indeed, 
have  a  man's  peers  among  his  contemporaries  so 

[216] 


TENNYSON 


generously  made  way  for  a  new  fame,  so  unanimously 
offered  him  the  seat  of  honour — and  such  contem- 
poraries, too — for  Tennyson  grew,  so  to  say,  in  a 
grove  of  giant  oaks,  with  such  men  as  Carlyle  and 
Huxley  and  Tyndall  and  Dickens  and  Thackeray  and 
Fitz  Gerald  for  his  fellows. 

Carlyle' s  attitude  toward  him,  one  almost  of  affec- 
tion, is  particularly  significant,  and  one  cannot  do 
better  on  this  day  of  reminiscence  than  recall  Car- 
lyle's  vivid  description  of  him — one  of  those  masterly 
characterisations  in  which  Carlyle  has  never  been 
equalled.  "Alfred,"  he  says,  "is  one  of  the  few 
British  and  foreign  figures  (a  not  increasing  number, 
I  think)  who  are  and  remain  beautiful  to  me,  a  true 
human  soul,  or  some  authentic  approximation 
thereto,  to  whom  your  own  soul  can  say,  *  Brother ! ' 
However,  I  doubt  he  will  not  come  [to  see  me];  he 
often  skips  me  in  these  brief  visits  to  town;  skips 
everybody,  indeed;  being  a  man  solitary  and  sad, 
as  certain  men  are,  dwelling  in  an  element  of  gloom, 
carrying  a  bit  of  chaos  about  him,  in  short,  which 
he  is  manufacturing  into  cosmos;  ...  I  think  he 
must  be  under  forty,  not  much  under  it.  One  of 
the  finest-looking  men  in  the  world.  A  great  shock 
of  rough,  dusky  hair;  bright,  laughing,  hazel  eyes; 
massive  aquiline  face,  most  massive,  yet  most 
delicate;  of  sallow  brown  complexion,  almost  Indian 
looking;  clothes  cynically  loose;  free  and  easy, 
[217] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 


smokes  infinite  tobacco.  His  voice  is  musical, 
metallic,  fit  for  loud  laughter  and  piercing  wail 
and  all  that  may  lie  between;  speech  and  speculation 
free  and  plenteous;  I  do  not  meet  in  these  late  decades 
such  company  over  a  pipe!  We  shall  see  what  he 
will  grow  to." 

And  again:  "A  fine,  large-featured,  dim-eyed, 
bronze-coloured,  shaggy-headed  man  is  Alfred; 
dusty,  smoky,  free-and-easy;  who  swims,  outwardly 
and  inwardly,  with  great  composure,  in  an  articulate 
element  as  of  tranquil  chaos  and  tobacco  smoke; 
great  now  and  then  when  he  does  emerge;  a  most 
restful,  brotherly,  soHd-hearted  man." 

Nor  do  I  know  a  better  rapid  impressionistic 
appreciation  of  Tennyson's  poetry  than  this  con- 
tained in  a  letter  of  Carlyle's  to  Tennyson  on  the 
publication  of  the  1842  two  volumes: 

"  Wherever  this  finds  you,  may  it  find  you  well, 
may  it  come  as  a  friendly  greeting  to  you.  I  have 
just  been  reading  your  poems;  I  have  read  certain 
of  them  over  again,  and  mean  to  read  them  over 
and  over  till  they  become  my  poems;  this  fact,  with 
the  inferences  that  lie  in  it,  is  of  such  emphasis  in 
me,  I  cannot  keep  it  to  myself,  but  must  needs 
acquaint  you,  too,  with  it.  If  you  knew  what  my 
relation  has  been  to  the  thing  called  English 
'  Poetry'  for  many  years  back,  you  would  think  such 
fact  almost  surprising!  Truly  it  is  long  since  in  any 
English  book,  poetry  or  prose,  I  have  felt  the  pulse 
I  218] 


TENNYSON 


of  a  real  man's  heart  as  I  do  in  this  same.  A  right 
valiant,  true,  fighting,  victorious  heart;  strong  as 
a  lion's,  yet  gentle,  loving,  and  full  of  music:  what 
I  call  a  genuine  singer's  heart!  There  are  tones  as 
of  the  nightingale;  low  murmurs  as  of  wood  doves 
at  summer  noon;  everywhere  a  noble  sound  as  of 
the  free  winds  and  leafy  woods.  The  simniest 
glow  of  Life  dwells  in  that  soul,  chequered  duly 
with  dark  streaks  from  night  and  Hades;  every- 
where one  feels  as  if  all  were  filled  with  yellow 
glowing  sunlight,  some  glorious,  golden  Vapour; 
from  which  form  after  form  bodies  itself;  naturally, 
golden  forms.  In  one  word,  there  seems  to  be  a 
note  of  'The  Eternal  Melodies'  in  this  man; 
for  which  let  all  other  men  be  thankful  and  joyful!  " 

Such  praise  of  "the  thing  called  English  'poetry'  " 
from  Carlyle  was  indeed  an  amazing  portent,  and 
how  inevitably  has  the  rough-barked  philosopher, 
under  whose  volcanic  crust  ran  such  fiery  streams 
of  true  poetic  lava,  seized  and  named  the  one  per- 
vading individual  quality  of  Tennyson's  work — 
that  golden  quality,  which  is  not  merely  the  aurea 
feliciias,  but  a  \critable  atmosphere  of  "glorious 
golden  vapour,"  a  golden  ether  naturally  embody- 
ing itself  in  "golden  forms," 

In  a  familiar  passage  of  "In  Memoriam"  it  will 
be  remembered  that  the  poet,  facing  "the  secular 
abyss  to  come,"  gloomily  moralises  on  the  evan- 
escence of  modern  rhyme  and  the  probable  brief 
duration  of  his  own  "mortal  lullabies  of  pain." 

[  219] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

Take  wings  of  foresight;  lighten  thro' 

The  secular  abyss  to  come, 

And  lo,  thy  deepest  lays  are  dumb 
Before  the  mouldering  of  a  yew; 

And  if  the  matin  songs,  that  woke 
The  darkness  of  our  planet,  last, 
Thine  own  shall  wither  in  the  vast, 

Ere  half  the  life-time  of  an  oak. 

Ere  these  have  clothed  their  branchy  bowers 

With  fifty  Mays,  thy  songs  are  vain 
*    *    * 

Now  that  more  than  those  "fifty  Mays"  are 
passed,  it  is  interesting  to  ask  how  does  the  poet 
stand  the  test  of  his  own  time  limit,  what  and  how 
much  does  Tennyson  mean  to  us  to-day,  fifty-nine 
years  after  "In  Memoriam,"  fifty-four  years  after 
"Maud,"  and  sixty-seven  years  after  the  two 
classical  volumes  of  1842  ? 

My  own  impression  is  that  his  fame  is  securer 
than  ever,  and  his  appeal — after  a  period  of  com- 
parative ecKpse — if  anything,  more  deeply  grounded. 
There  was  a  time,  some  twenty  years  ago,  when  it 
was  the  fashion  to  depreciate  Tennyson  as  thin, 
shallow,  and  pretty-pretty;  and  probably  young  people 
still  pass  through  that  stage  of  development  when 
they  say  that  they  have  "gone  beyond"  Tennyson, 
that  he  has  nothing  for  them,  and  so  forth.  Such 
[  220] 


TENNYSON 


is  a  part  of  the  history  of  every  classic.  Perfect 
utterance  has  a  way  after  a  while — owing  partly 
to  the  universal  currency  its  perfection  naturally 
gains — of  seeming  superficial  utterance.  Young 
minds  in  particular  are  apt  to  find  the  profound  in 
the  obscure,  and  thought  in  the  turmoil  of  mental 
fermentation  rather  than  in  the  distilled  crystal  of 
finished  thinking  and  absolute  expression.  Writers 
such  as  Browning  and  Meredith,  therefore,  through 
the  very  imperfection  of  their  art,  by  reason  of  their 
cryptic  and  oracular  manner  of  stammering  or 
blurting  out  their  half-reahsed  thoughts,  and  their 
general  torment  of  expression,  gain  credit  for  more 
prodigious  births  of  mind,  merely  on  the  strength 
of  their  agonised  parturition.  Doubtless,  it  was  the 
unearthly  groanings  of  the  sibyl  that  gave  an  impor- 
tance to  her  messages  seldom  to  be  found  in  the 
messages  themselves.  Because  Michelangelo  was 
wont  suggestively  to  leave  his  creations  attached 
to  the  nature  from  which  they  sprang  by  some  por- 
tion of  unchisclcd  rock,  the  modern  sculptor  often 
chooses  to  give  us  little  else  than  the  natural 
rock. 

Similarly,  whenever  a  poet  is  able  to  transmute 
the  crude  materials  of  his  philosophising  into  a 
lucent  mysticism,  minds  unable  to  realise  that  there 
should  be  mystery  in  clearness  mistake  the  profound 
azure  of  his  thought  for  shallowness. 
[221] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

Because  Tennyson  had  achieved  such  a  masterly 
way  of  saying  things,  some  will  have  it  that  he  has 
nothing  to  say.  Then,  again,  his  offense  is  that  his 
thinking — what  there  is  of  it — is  in  the  main  hopeful 
thinking.  There  are  those  who  call  a  man  a  thinker 
only  so  long  as  his  thoughts  are  hopelessly  black 
or  hopelessly  tangled.  Faith  is  never  credited 
with  brains.  It  is  only  Despair  that  is  called 
profound.  Yet,  as  Meredith — no  angler  in  the 
shallows — has  finely  said:  "Who  can  really  think 
and  not  think  hopefully."  Of  course  the  truth 
is  all  the  other  way.  It  is  despair  and  pessi- 
mism that  are  the  shallow  reasoners,  and  faith  that 
is  rooted  in  the  mystic  verities  of  existence,  the 
divining,  star-sustained  mind  that,  realising  the 
limitations  of  sight,  believes  though  it  cannot  see, 
and  trusts  its  spiritual  instinct  before  its  mortal 
logic. 

Again,  Tennyson  loses  for  some  judgments  by 
the  very  amplitude  of  his  nature.  He  was,  in  a 
marked  degree,  "a  full  man,"  the  more  remarkably 
so  when  we  consider  his  artistic  sensibilities.  Such 
artistic  sensibility  and  such  an  all-enfolding  scope 
of    human    interests    have    seldom    gone    together. 

One  sings  a  flower,  and  one  a  face,  and  one 
Screens  from  the  world  a  corner  choice  and  small; 

Each  toy  its  little  laureate  hath,  but  none 
Sings  of  the  whole — as  only  he  sang  All. 
[  222] 


TENNYSON 


To  win  certain  critical  suffrages  a  poet  must  not 
be  too  human;  his  interests  must  be  narrow  and 
perverse  rather  than  central  and  sane. 

Tennyson,  however,  was  a  poet  more  on  Goethe's 
plan,  and  into  the  alembic  of  his  art  cast  every  variety 
of  culture  and  human  experience.  His  poetic  gift 
was  nurtured  on  the  sternest  studies,  particularly 
in  modern  science,  the  study  of  astronomy  (as  with 
liis  master,  Virgil — "caeUque  vias  et  sidera  mon- 
strent")  having  for  him  a  special  fascination.  It 
was,  doubtless,  this  strong  solution  of  modern 
thought  in  his  poetry  that  helped  to  win  for  it  such 
serious  attention  from  his  contemporaries,  then 
in  the  first  spiritual  throes  brought  about  by  the 
discoveries  and  speculations  of  evolutionary  science. 
"  Your  poetry,"  said  Jowett  to  him  on  one  occasion, 
when  Tennyson  had  been  fighting  shy  of  one  of  those 
strenuous  philosophical  encounters  in  which  Jowett 
delighted,  "has  an  element  of  philosophy  more  to  be 
considered  than  any  regular  philosophy  in  England. 
It  is  almost  too  much  impregnated  with  philosophy. 
Yet  this  to  some  minds  will  be  its  greatest  charm." 
Evidently  the  robust  translator  of  Plato  had  not 
reached  the  "gone  beyond  Tennyson"  stage! 

With  this  philosophic  stability  went  a  universality 

of  human  sympathy,  by  which  he  identified  himself 

with  all  the  national  interests  and  movements  and 

happenings  of  his  time;  so  that  the  dreamy  singer 

[  223] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

of  "The  Lotus  Eaters"  and  "The  Palace  of  Art" 
would  be  found  on  another  page  meditating  geology 
and  astronomy,  "terrible  muses,"  on  another  paint- 
ing some  simple  idyl  of  English  country  life,  as  in 
"Dora";  on  another,  singing  the  epic  of  the  emanci- 
pation of  women,  and  still  on  another  celebrating 
the  heroism  of  English  soldiers  at  Balaclava.  His 
many-sided  talent — as  distinct  from  his  essential 
poetic  genius  and  vision — seemed  to  dehght  in 
experiment,  in  reclaiming  for  the  poetic  domain 
as  large  as  possible  an  area  of  human  life  and 
character,  often  considered  as  lying  prosaically  out- 
side its  limits.  Thus  even  he  will  write  dialect 
studies  of  rustic  types,  such  as  "The  Northern 
Farmer,"  and  the  poet  of  "Lucretius"  perpetrate 
a  popular  sentimentality  such  as  "The  May  Queen." 
From  this  determination  that  nothing  human — or 
Victorian! — should  be  alien  to  his  art,  there  is 
undoubtedly  a  middle-class,  domestic  smack  to 
some  of  his  work  which  has  naturally  provoked 
distaste  in  some  of  his  critics,  a  quality  that  some- 
times even  creeps  into  his  loftier  and  more  universal 
meditation.  It  was  his  distaste  for  this  quality 
that  prompted  Mr.  Swinburne  to  nickname  "The 
Idylls  of  the  King"  as  "Morte  d' Albert,  or  Idylls 
of  the  Prince  Consort,"  a  delightfully  cruel  gibe, 
for  which  the  poems,  noble  as  for  the  most  part 
they  are,  unhappily  give  a  certain  warrant. 
[  224] 


TENNYSON 


Yet,  was  it  not  in  these  same  "  Idylls  "  that  ' 

God  made  himself  an  awful  rose  of  dawn. 

What  an  endless  array  of  such  nobly  beautiful 
lines,  such  thrilling  magic  pictures,  throng  back 
upon  one's  memory  as  we  pick  up  our  old  copy  of 
Tennyson,  and  give  thanks  for  that  fortunate  birth- 
day— August  6,  1809!  I  suspect  that  many  share 
FitzGerald's  prejudice  in  favour  of  the  earlier  poems, 
and  undoubtedly  the  purest,  most  essential,  poetry 
is  contained  in  those  1842  two  volumes  of  master- 
pieces. 

"Mariana,"  "The  Lotus  Eaters,"  "The  Miller's 
Daughter,"  "Ulysses,"  "Oenone,"  "Will  Water- 
proof," "The  Lady  of  Shalott,"  "Morte  d' Arthur," 
"  Love  and  Duty."  What  a  perfume  in  the  mention 
these  old  titles  bring  with  them,  and  yet  surely 
it  was  Old  Fitz's  characteristic  crotchet,  rather 
than  a  serious  criticism,  that  could  forego  "Maud" 
and  "In  Memoriam"  and  "The  Princess."  No 
man  can  be  so  devoted  to  Crabbe  as  FitzGerald 
was  without  severe  limitations.  No,  there  is  no 
need  to  make  distinction  between  Tennyson's  work 
at  one  period  or  another.  From  beginning  to  end 
it  presents  an  entirety  of  achievement,  remarkable 
in  its  sustained  high  quality.  One  could  hardly 
name  another  poet  whose  "collected  works"  are  so 
free  from  dead  spots  and  dull  patches,  so  alive  with 
various  power  and  enchantment.   What  magic  music, 

15  [225] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

what  golden  atmosphere,  what  fairy  vision,  what 
living  landscape,  what  spiritual  passion,  what  noble 
ardours  of  sense  and  soul,  what  simple  tears,  what 
carved  and  gilded  chambers  of  imagery,  lie  locked 
between  these  old  covers.  Only  Keats  may  sur- 
pass him  in  beauty,  only  Coleridge  in  wizardry, 
and  none  but  Shakespeare  can  match  him  at  a  simple, 
heart-broken  song. 

No,  I  am  afraid,  like  Jowett,  I  have  not  yet  "gone 
beyond  Tennyson." 


[226] 


Ill 

FOUR     NOTES    ON 
GEORGE  MEREDITH 

I 

MODERN  LOVE 

TERE  is  one  of  those  poems  especially  dear 
to  the  lover  of  poetry,  which,  in  addition 
to  their  intrinsic  poetic  appeal,  bring  him 
a  romantic  sense  of  esoteric  possession.  Such  a 
poem  once — but,  alas!  no  longer — was  FitzGcrald's 
"Rubaiyat."  Twenty  years  ago  it  was  a  hushed 
and  perfumed  secret  of  literature,  a  hidden  honey- 
comb of  Hymettus  jealously  shared  among  a  for- 
tunate few.  We  made  manuscript  copies  of  it  at 
midnight  for  some  dear  friend,  or  tried  a  quatrain 
on  a  promising  new  acquaintance,  like  a  password. 
The  first  edition  of  "Modern  Love"  shared  with  the 
"Rubaiyat"  a  similar  illicit  devotion;  but,  whereas 
our  FitzGcrald  shrine  has  long  since  been  invaded 
by  the  Cook's  tourist  of  literature,  George  Meredith's 
poem,  in  spite  of  much  enthusiastic  advertising, 
still  remains  inviolate,  a  garden  enclosed,  a  spring 
shut  uj),  a  fountain  sealed.  The  close-woven 
[227] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

thorn-hedge  of  its  style  has  proved,  and  is  likely 
to  prove,  too  forbidding  a  barrier  for  the  multi- 
tude, which  casts  a  curious  glance  on  the  min- 
atory inscription  over  its  gate,  and  passes  on 
to  some  more  accessible  pleasaunce.  It  has  been 
wittily  said  of  George  Meredith's  poetry,  that  the 
poet  presents  you  with  admirable  nuts,  but  has 
neglected  to  provide  nut-crackers.  This  omission, 
no  doubt,  accounts  for  the  fact  that  the  man  who 
loves  to  keep  his  poetry  to  himself  and  a  few  friends 
may  still  enjoy  his  "Modern  Love,"  with  no  fear 
of  picnic  parties. 

This  is  not  meat 

For  little  people  or  for  fools. 

This  famous  warning  against  trespassers  (found 
only  in  the  first  edition  of  1862)  has  a  naive,  almost 
pathetic,  look  to-day;  so  accustomed  have  we 
become  to  a  noble,  nude,  and  antique  treatment  of 
the  passion  of  love,  and  the  tragic  dilemmas  of 
marriage  in  literature.  Nowadays,  we  rather  expect 
our  poets  to  drag  their  nuptial  couches  into  the 
street,  than  are  shocked  at  the  hymeneal  exposure; 
and  the  novelist  is  no  longer  forbid  to  tell  the  secrets 
of  his  domestic  prison-house.  In  1862,  however, 
public  sentiment  had  several  severe  and  salutary 
shocks  ahead  of  it.  Swinburne's  "  Poems  and  Bal- 
lads" had  yet  to  come,  also  Rossetti's  "The  House 
[228] 


MODERN  LOVE 


of  Life."  The  whole  "  fleshly  school"  of  poetry  and 
painting  was  just  beginning  its  work.  Nor  had 
Wagner  acclimatised  a  Prince  Consort  England  to 
"Laus  Veneris."  "Modern  Love,"  therefore,  would 
come  to  a  scandaHsed  1862  with  a  factitious  piquancy 
as  being  the  earliest  matrimonial  torture-chamber 
thrown  open  to  the  public.  One  can  imagine  its 
gasp  of  bewildered  prudery,  as  1862  opened  the 
rather  dry,  unpromising-looking  volume,  and  fell 
upon  the  masterly  first  sonnet,  in  which  at  once  the 
scene  and  the  theme  of  the  poem  are  flashed  upon 
us  by  a  few  vivid  strokes,  as  of  Hghtning.  How 
audacious  even  still  is  the  art  that  fears  not  to  paint 
so  intimate  a  picture  of  a  tragic  human  situation, 
that  in  other  hands  could  only  have  been  a  vulgarly 
realistic  "  photographic  d'alcove."  But  how  the  noble 
imagery,  the  elemental  metaphoric  method,  lift  it 
far  above  any  such  comparison! 

Like  sculptured  effigies  they  might  be  seen 
Upon  their  marriage-tomb,  the  sword  between; 
Each  wishing  for  the  sword  that  severs  all. 

And  now  to-day,  as  I  hinted,  wc  are  fortunate  in 
being  able  to  accept  and  enjoy  the  poem,  undis- 
quieted  by  any  novelty  in  its  philosophy,  or  dis- 
tracted by  any  sense  of  its  smacking  of  propaganda. 
Doubtless,  it  grew  out  of  a  cruel  and  complex 
matrimonial  situation,  and  Meredith,  doubtless, 
[229  J 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

wrote  out  of  the  bitter  anguish  and  bewilderment 
and  irony  of  his  heart;  "bitter  constraint  and  sad 
occasion  dear"  made  this  poem  as  they  have  made 
all  the  great  and  lovely  things  of  art;  but  we  no 
longer  care  what  the  particular  matrimonial  situa- 
tion was,  how  far  it  was  autobiographical,  nor 
indeed  need  we  be  curious  to  disentangle  the  some- 
what enigmatic  drama  of  the  poem.  All  that  matters 
to  us  is  the  beauty  that  has  flowered  out  of  that  stern 
soil  of  poignant  circumstance;  the  pattern,  the 
music,  that  a  potent  interpretative  individuality 
was  able  to  wring  from  the  tragic  travail  of  his 
soul.  One  of  Meredith's  favourite  tests  of  the 
poetic  nature  was — how  far  it  is  able  to  take  the  rock 
and  rubble,  the  pain  and  harshness  and  bitterness 
of  things,  and  make  them  sing.  No  poet  has  had 
a  firmer,  deeper  faith  in,  so  to  say,  the  philosophical 
significance  and  value  of  beauty  as  a  product. 
His  faith  in  life,  in  nature — "our  only  visible  friend" 
— is  founded  mainly  on  nature's  inexhaustible  capac- 
ity for  transmuting  "ancient  wrath  and  wreck" 
into  ever  new  forms  of  vital  joy  and  victorious 
being.  '  His  philosophy  seems  to  have  been — that  so 
long  as  a  situation,  however  "tragic,"  can  be  made 
to  "sing,"  we  need  not  despair  of  life.  This  is 
the  teaching  of  all  his  writing,  particularly  of  his 
austerely  sweet  nature  poetry;  and  here  in  'Modern 
Love,'  thus  early  in  his  life  and  in  the  vigorous 
[230] 


^lODERN   LOVE 


young  manhood  of  his  powers,  we  find  him  applying 
it  to  perhaps  the  most  agonising  of  human  dilemmas. 

These  two  were  rapid  falcons  in  a  snare, 
Condemn'd  to  do  the  flitting  of  the  bat. 
Lovers  beneath  the  singing  sky  of  May, 
They  wander'd  once;   clear  as  the  dew  on  flowers: 

Then  each  applied  to  each  that  fatal  knife. 
Deep  questioning,  which  probes  to  endless  dole. 
Ah,  what  a  dusty  answer  gets  the  soul 
When  hot  for  certainties  in  this  our  life! 

Exactly  what  these  "tragic  hints"  hint  at  may 
sometimes  seem  a  Httle  dark.  Meredith  is  almost 
tiresomely  sibylline,  and  somewhat  overdoes  the 
part  of  psychologic  mystery-man.  If  only  he 
would  consent  sometimes  to  be  a  little  more  clear, 
one  feels  that  he  would  gain  even  in  profundity. 
For,  after  all,  one  thing  in  life  is  very  little  more 
mysterious  than  another;  and  no  ill-mated  marriage, 
however  complex,  is  so  beyond  the  disentangling 
skill  and  suggestion  of  words  that  we  need  make 
Egyptian  darkness  of  it — of  the  simple  facts,  I 
mean,  that  give  rise  to  the  psychologic  situation 
which  is  the  poem's  reason  for  existence. 

"Rapid  falcons  in  a  snare  .  .  ." — the  imagery 
is  picturesque,  but  with  two  such  souls  as  we  have 
tragic  glimpses  of  in  other  moments  and  attitudes, 
are  we  to  think  of  a  mistaken  marriage  as  a  "snare" 

[231] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

that  could  so  tragically  lime  and  entangle  them? 
Strong  souls  have  always  made  short  work  of  such 
snares.  So,  it  would  hardly  seem  that  "Modern 
Love "  is  really  motived  by  that  protest  against  the 
convention  of  marriage  which  is  the  theme  of 
Meredith's  later  novels.  The  sorrow  is  deeper 
than  that.  It  is  the  sorrow  of  a  more  ideal  experi- 
ment, the  sorrow  of  the  almost  impossibihty  of  a 
perfect  union  between  man  and  woman,  with  the 
best  will  in  the  world  on  both  sides.  "Modern" 
Love!  In  a  way,  the  title  jars,  as  being  a  httle 
cheap,  merely  contemporary,  journalistic.  Yet, 
probably,  Meredith  meant  it  to  stand  for  a  sensitive 
evolution  of  the  passion  of  love,  which  perhaps  has 
only  emerged  with  the  keener  mysteries  of  modern 
science;  a  love  which  lays  stress  on  the  physical 
sacrament,  more  and  more  for  mysterious  spiritual 
reasons.  Pagan  love  laid  stress  on  that,  and  pro- 
prietorial love  is  its  outcome,  the  love  of  jealous 
ownership  and  murder;  mediaeval  love,  on  the  other 
hand,  laid  stress  on  the  purely  spiritual  relation, 
endeavouring  to  divorce  the  body  and  the  soul 
of  passion,  and  retain  only  the  soul.  Modern  love, 
however,  is  jealous  of  the  body  because  the  so-called 
materialistic  sciences  have  taught  it  that  body  and 
soul  are  mysteriously,  and  sacredly,  one.  I  must 
be  "faithful "  to  you,  you  must  be  faithful  to  me— 
not  on  the  constraint  of  any  external  contract,  but 
[232] 


MODERN   LOVE 


because  of  the  chemical  adherence  and  fidelity  of 
the  very  particles  of  our  flesh,  harmoniously  destined 
for  magic  union  one  with  the  other.  O  if  that 
should  fail  and  by  some  defect  of  nature  go  astray ! 
Then  is  our  tragedy — then  we  write  "  Modern  Love  "  ; 
and,  hanng  dreamed  greatly  of  a  love  that  believes 
not  only  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  but  in  the 
immortahty  of  matter,  we 

Cannot  be  at  peace 

In  having  Love  upon  a  mortal  lease. 

— cannot  consent  to  ''eat  our  pot  of  honey  on  the 
grave." 

"  Modern  Love"  is  the  tragedy,  in  terms  of  human 
love,  of  an  idealism  which  Walter  Pater  has  also 
symbolised  ip  the  story  of  "  Sebastian  Van  Storck," 
the  tragedy  of  a  temperament  haunted  by  the 
Infinite  and  the  Perfect,  and  rendered  melancholy 
by  its  "fastidious  refusal  to  be  or  to  do  any  Hmited 
thing";  a  temperament  which  cannot  accept  the 
apparent  conditions  of  Nature — 

Whose  hands  bear,  here,  a  seed-bag;  there,  an  urn, 

— and  play  the  game  of  life  and  love  on  her  terms 
of  "seasons — not  eternities,"  Our  "human  rose" 
is  too  mysteriously  fair.  Our  human  joy  seems  to 
carry  with  it  too  hallowed  a  sense  of  immortality. 
It  is  a  noble  spiritual  agony,  the  last  ordeal 
of  that  finely  tempered  clay  that  will  not  accept 

1  233] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

the  senses,  except  on  the  terms  of  the  spirit;  the  last 
bitter  cup,  maybe,  of  initiation  of  the  dreaming 
indomitable  soul,  still  faithful  to  its  mystic  vision 
of  permanent  reality,  unseduced  by  pleasure  and 
undismayed  even  by  the  face  of  death. 

So,  it  seems  to  one,  "Modern  Love"  interprets 
itself  with  grander,  more  cosmic,  meanings,  as  it 
more  surely  ascends  to  its  place  among  the  austere 
fixed  stars  of  English  poetry,  and  as  we  bring  to 
it  hearts  and  minds  less  occupied  with  the  mere 
bloom  and  song  of  things,  and  sadly  set  to  hear  more 
of  the  strange  secret  of  that  bloom  and  song.  The 
vivid  human  tableaux,  the  painfully  ironic  pictures 
of  the  mere  human  dilemma,  are  as  vivid  as  ever; 
the  mortal  story,  so  dramatically  flashed  in  tragic 
hints,  grips  and  agonises  us  as  at  our  first  reading; 
but  the  more  we  read  the  poem  the  more  we  value  it 
for  the  iron  song  that  sweeps  through  it,  the  austere 
music  as  of  the  wind  among  pines  on  a  starry  night, 
and  for  its  noble  beauty  as  of  tragic  bronze. 

II 
THE  185 1   POEMS 

If  it  be  true,  as  Mark  Pattison  held,  that  an  ap- 
preciation of  Milton  is  the  reward  of  a  lifelong  cul- 
ture, it  is  none  the  less   true  that  the  appreciation 
of  Meredith  is  largely  a  fortunate  accident  of  temper- 
[234] 


THE  1851  POEMS 


ament.  The  conservative,  traditional,  academic  type 
of  mind  reads  him,  when  it  reads  him  at  all,  with  im- 
patience, too  much  resenting  his  rebellious  impres- 
sionism to  appreciate  and  enjoy  his  virile  creativeness, 
liis  riotous  vitality.  For  such  minds  writing  is  still  an 
art  of  statement,  impassioned  maybe,  but  still  state- 
ment; with  Meredith  and  writers  affiHated  to  him, 
writing  is  an  art  of  suggestion,  using  for  its  ends  all 
available  means  and  methods,  pressing  into  its  service 
arts  "alien  to  the  artist,"  and  perhaps  more  and 
more  employing  the  methods  of  music  and  painting. 
^Meredith's  writing  is  essentially  modern,  the  prod- 
uct of  an  age  that  produced  Wagner.  Carlyle  and 
Browning  were,  of  course,  the  first  exponents  of 
the  style,  and  Meredith  learned  much  from  both 
of  them.  All  three  stand  together  as  the  innovators 
of  a  form  of  expression,  almost  journalistic  in  its 
determination  to  flash  the  immediate  effect,  and 
Shakespearean  in  the  audacity  of  its  metaphoric 
method — a  method  designed  to  reveal  and  to  embody 
the  last  intimacy  of  insight  and  sensation.  Of 
course,  all  three  are  innovating  artists,  because  they 
are  first  innovating  thinkers,  and  their  subject- 
matter  no  less  than  their  manner  is  disturbing  to 
minds  that  feel — and  possibly  with  justice — that 
art  is  not  concerned  with  new  thinking,  but  with 
the  ancient  verities,  and  indeed  loses  its  immortal 
beauty  and  infinite  serenity  when  it  gives  car  to 

[235] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

those  spiritual  and  intellectual  "storms  that  rage 
outside  its  happy  ground."  Thought  is  said  to  be 
destructive  of  beauty,  disastrous  to  fair  faces;  and 
there  are  those  who  would  seem  to  feel  that  art  is 
unnaturally  employed  in  the  expression  of  spiritual 
struggle,  or  sensual  turmoil.  Art,  they  would  seem 
to  say,  should  be  static,  not  dynamic.  Poetry  for 
such  is  the  expression  of  traditional  themes  in  the 
traditional  poetic  manner — and  they  are  by  no 
means  all  wrong. 

For,  as  one  grows  older — and  to  grow  older  is 
proverbially  to  grow  more  conservative — one  comes 
better  to  understand  the  academic  distaste  for  writers 
of  the  Carlyle-Browning-Meredith  school,  and  grows 
more  to  insist  that  writing  shall  be  writing — not 
talking,  however  brilliant,  not  fantastic  flashlighting 
of  one's  theme,  no  merely  pyrotechnic  hints  of  one's 
meaning,  or  musical  adumbrations,  or  the  presen- 
tation of  a  verbal  palette,  however  chromatic  and 
bizarre,  for  a  picture.  We  crave  "the  little  word 
big  with  eternity,"  the  one  inevitable  metaphor, 
the  word  worthy  of  eternal  marble,  the  image  as 
immediate  and  universal  as  lightning  or  the  cry  of 
a  child;  not  the  innumerable  tentative  word,  how- 
ever vivid  and  strange,  nor  the  play  of  clustering 
imagery,  however  Protean  or  merely  harlequinesque. 

And  the  more  we  demand  this  expressive  finality 
and  universality  of  literature,  the  more  we  realise  that 

[236] 


THE  1851   POEMS 


these  three  writers  I  have  classed  together  arc 
inspired  prophetic  journalists,  moulders  of  the 
spiritual  aspiration  of  their  time,  rather  than  endur- 
ing voices  of  the  eternal  meanings. 

It  is  exceedingly  improbable  that  any  one  of  them 
will  be  read,  or  even  understood,  a  hundred  years 
from  now;  for  they  write,  so  to  speak,  in  the  spiritual 
slang  of  the  day.  They  have  all  worked,  for  the 
most  part,  in  the  perishable  medium  of  contemporary 
utterance,  and  on,  of  course,  a  far  higher  plane, 
must  suffer  a  similar  disintegration  to  that  which 
must  inevitably  overtake  the  clay  masterpieces  of 
Mr.  Kipling. 

But  the  prophet  must  always,  of  necessity,  be 
somewhat  of  a  journalist,  and  the  fact  of  his  utterance 
being  more  adapted  for  its  immediate  purpose  than 
for  permanent  inspiration,  is  not  to  say  that  the 
divine  fire  is  not  in  him,  or  that  he  is  not  a  chosen 
vessel  of  vast  service  to  his  day  and  generation.  It 
is  quite  possible  to  be  a  great  writer,  without  appeal- 
ing to  posterity;  and  such  writers  as  I  am  speaking 
of  will  probably  reach  posterity  rather  as  spiritual 
influences  in  the  blood  of  Time  than  as  names  upon 
his  lips  or  living  voices  in  his  ears. 

So  much  in  concession  to  the  conservative,  classic, 
point  of  view;  yet  happy  is  the  man  whose  enjoy- 
ment of  Paradise  Lost  does  not  preclude  him  from 
appreciation  of  Leaves  of  Grass,  or  whom  Words- 

[237] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE    REVIEWS 

worth — with  his  somewhat  anthropomorphic  worship 
of  nature — has  not  disqualified  for  understanding  of 
Meredith's  sterner  "reading  of  earth." 

Whether  or  not  there  are  ears  to  hear  Meredith 
in  the  future  will  depend  upon  his  style,  upon  the 
durability  of  his  verbal  method;  it  is  to  be  hoped 
for  the  sake  of  our  great-great-grandchildren  that 
they  may  be  able  to  decipher  that  "  Meredithesc," 
which,  though  difficult  even  to  us,  has  a  certain 
thrill  of  contemporary  intimacy  that  enables  us 
to  guess  at  the  spiritual  meaning  when  the  writing 
itself  is  somewhat  verbally  dark;  for  the  spiritual 
and  intellectual  content  of  Meredith's  writing  is  of 
that  eternal  importance  which  concerns  men  in  all 
ages.  Man  will  be  as  much  in  need  of  a  practical 
faith  in  the  invisible  powers  and  the  divine  signifi- 
cance of  the  human  struggle  a  thousand  years  hence 
as  to-day;  and,  for  that  reason,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
Meredith's  message  may  still  survive,  though  it 
will  surely  need  the  aid  of  a  glossary.  Yet,  as  we 
still  read  Chaucer  for  pleasure,  maybe  men  a  thou- 
sand years  hence  will  still  painfully  translate  Mere- 
dith for  the  good  of  their  souls, 

Man  has  many  ways  of  attaining  faith.  The 
ways  vary  with  his  temperament.  But  the  way 
most  convincing  to  the  modern,  or  present-day, 
mind  is  the  way  of  the  fact.  Not  faith  founded 
on  fiction,  but  faith  founded  on  fact.     Such  faith  it 

[238] 


THE  185 1   POEMS 


is  that  Meredith  brings  us.  The  strength  of  his 
philosophy  lies  in  his  facing  all  the  facts,  ugly  and 
beautiful,  stern  and  gentle.  Perhaps  it  is  a  Mani- 
chean  world — but  Meredith  never  doubts  that  God 
has  the  best  of  it.  The  devil  is  merely  a  part  of  the 
process.  In  proof  of  this,  what  more  do  you  need 
than — a  rose! 

And  O,  green  bounteous  Earth! 

Bacchante  Mother!     Stern  to  those 
Who  live  not  in  thy  heart  of  mirth; 
Death  shall  I  shrink  from,  loving  thee? 

Into  the  breast  that  gives  the  rose, 
Shall  I  with  shuddering  jail? 

A  rose — or  an  automobile.  Both  would  serve 
alike  to  Meredith  as  evidences  of  the  divine  energy, 
ever  feeding  with  celestial  fire  this  mysterious  activity 
we  call  life. 

His  novels  are  lit  with  this  invincible  faith  in 
"the  upper  glories,"  in  spite  of  their  dealing  so 
constantly  with  sophisticated  social  types  and  con- 
ditions; even  through  them  Meredith  was  able  to 
find  "the  developments  and  the  eternal  meanings." 

Meredith  was  a  comedian,  a  social  satirist,  as 
well  as  a  spiritual  teacher  and  a  poet.  It  is,  indeed, 
because  he  was  so  much  a  man  of  this  world  that 
we  pay  such  attentive  heed  to  what  he  has  to  say 
about  the  next.  He  loves  to  take  life  in  apparently 
its  most  artificial,   most   unreal,   developments,   to 

[  239] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 


demonstrate  for  us  that,  however  sublunary  or 
exiled  from  "the  healthy  breath  of  morn"  it  may 
seem,  it  is  none  the  less  fed  by  the  great  forces,  and 
still  a  thing  of  magic  and  mysterious  destiny. 

This  radiant  faith,  diffused  in  his  novels,  is  to 
be  found  concentrated— perhaps  too  much  concen- 
trated—in Meredith's  poetry.  There  are  those  who 
think  that  Meredith  expressed  himself  most  lastingly 
in  his  verse;  and  there  are  others  who  cannot  read 
his  verse  at  all.  The  positive  side  of  an  argument 
is  usually  that  best  worth  listening  to.  When  we 
find  that  a  new  and  strange  light,  so  inspiringly 
visible  to  us,  is  nothing  but  Egyptian  darkness 
to  others — we  can  but  mercifully  conclude  that 
those  others  are  blind.  Meredith's  verse,  in  its 
later  developments  particularly,  is  hard  reading, 
strangely,  perhaps  wilfully,  crabbed  and  cryptic; 
but  it  is  no  more  so  than  Browning's,  and  the 
message  it  holds  for  us  within  its  rough  and  prickly 
husk  is  better  worth  finding.  His  verse  has  a  dis- 
tinction that  Browning's  seldom  attained,  and  both 
poets  are  curiously  alike  in  their  alternation  be- 
tween  lyric  simplicity  and    sibylline  mystification. 

The  two  volumes  of  Meredith's  verse,  recently 
published  by  Messrs.  Scribners,  which  are  the 
occasion  of  these  remarks,*  bring  together  the  two 

*  Poems  Written  in  Early  Youth  and  Last  Poems.    By  George 
Meredith.     New  York:    Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  1910. 
[240] 


THE   185 1   POEMS 


extremes  of  Meredith's  poetic  achievement,  in  a 
striking  contrast  of  method,  but  an  equally  striking 
harmony  of  spiritual  attitude.  The  Meredith  of 
the  Last  Poems,  and  the  Meredith  of  the  Poems 
Wriltefi  in  Early  Youth  are  one  and  the  same,  the 
septuagenarian  and  the  boy  of  twenty-three,  in 
their  jubilant  affirmation  of  the  joyous  significance 
of  life;  though  of  the  two  we  cannot  but  feel  that  it 
is  the  boy  who  is  the  better  poet. 

Take  this  fragment  from  the  Last  Poems: 

This  love  of  nature  that  allures  to  take 

Irregularity  for  harmony, 
Of  larger  scope  than  our  hard  measures  make, 

Cherish  it  as  thy  school  for  when  on  thee 
The  ills  of  life  descend. 

Here  the  old  man  is  still  of  the  same  mind  with  the 
boy,  but  the  boy  said  it  better  when  he  sang  of 
Nature  as  "our  only  visible  friend — "  when  he 
wrote  in  his  remarkable  poem  "  The  Spirit  of  Earth 
in  Autumn" — 

Great  Mother  Nature!  teach  me,  like  thee, 
To  kiss  the  season  and  shun  regrets. 
And  am  I  more  than  the  mother  who  bore, 
Mock  me  not  with  thy  harmony! 
Teach  me  to  blot  regrets, 
Great  Mother!   me  inspire 
With  faith  that  forward  sets 
But  feeds  the  living  fire. 

16  [  241  ] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE    REVIEWS 

Faith  that  never  frets 

For  vagueness  in  the  form. 

In  life,  O  keep  me  warm! 

For  what  is  human  grief? 

And  what  do  men  desire?  ': 

Teach  me  to  feel  myself  the  tree, 

And  not  the  withered  leaf. 

Fixed  am  I  and  await  the  dark  to  be. 

The  beauty  of  "Love  in  the  Valley"  needs  no 
further  praise.  It  is  one  of  the  most  perfect  poems 
in  the  English  tongue.  There  are  some  of  us 
who  would  not  exchange  it  for  Keats. 

Also,  in  his  early  (185 1)  poems  Meredith  sang 
with  a  simplicity  curiously  contrasted  with  his 
later  manner.  That  young  book  is  full  of  ballads 
and  lyrics,  ballads  all  swing  and  bloom,  that  would 
surprise  those  who  have  only  read  ''The  Egoist  "  or 
"Diana  of  the  Crossways."  Take  this  ballad  of 
"Beauty  Rohtraut,"  for  example: 

BEAUTY  ROHTRAUT 

(From  Moricke) 

What  is  the  name  of  King  Ringang's  daughter? 

Rohtraut,  Beauty  Rohtraut! 
And  what  does  she  do  the  livelong  day. 
Since  she  dare  not  knit  and  spin  alway? 
O  hunting  and  fishing  is  ever  her  play! 
And,  heigh!    that  her  huntsman  I  might  be! 
I'd  hunt  and  fish  right  merrily! 
Be  silent,  heart! 

[  242] 


THE  1851   POEMS 


And  it  chanced  that,  after  this  some  time, 

Rohtraut,  Beauty  Rohtraut, 
The  boy  in  the  Castle  has  gained  access, 
And  a  horse  he  has  got  and  a  huntsman's  dress, 
To  hunt  and  to  fish  with  the  merry  Princess; 
And,  O!  that  a  king's  son  I  might  be! 
Beauty  Rohtraut  I  love  so  tenderly. 
Hush!    hush!    my  heart. 

Under  a  grey  old  oak  they  sat, 

Beauty,  Beauty  Rohtraut! 
She  laughs:    "Why  look  you  so  slyly  at  me? 
If  you  have  heart  enough,  come,  kiss  me." 
Cried  the  breathless  boy,  "  Kiss  thee?" 
But   he   thinks,  kind  fortune   has  favored   my  youth; 
And  thrice  he  has  kissed  Beauty   Rohtraut's  mouth. 
Down!  down!  mad  heart. 

Then  slowly  and  silently  they  rode  home, — 

Rohtraut,  Beauty  Rohtraut! 
The  boy  was  lost  in  his  delight: 
"And,  wert  thou  Empress  this  very  night, 
I  would  not  heed  or  feel  the  blight; 
Ye  thousand  leaves  of  the  wild  wood  wist 
How  Beauty  Rohtraut's  mouth  I  kiss'd. 
Hush!  hush!  wild  heart." 

Or  this  bitter  song  which  includes  in  its  singing 
somewhat  of  that  later  sorrow  which  probably 
made  "Modern  Love:" 

SONG 

Fair  and  false!   No  dawn  will  greet 
Thy  waking  beauty  as  of  old; 

[243] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

The  little  flower  beneath  thy  feet 

Is  alien  to  thy  smile  so  cold; 
The  merry  bird  flown  up  to  meet 
Young  morning  from  his  nest  i'  the  wheat, 

Scatters  his  joy  to  wood  and  wold, 

But  scorns  the  arrogance  of  gold. 

False  and  fair!     I  scarce  know  why, 

But  standing  in  the  lonely  air, 
And  underneath  the  blessed  sky, 

I  plead  for  thee  in  my  despair; — 
For  thee  cut  off,  both  heart  and  eye 
From  living  truth;  thy  spring  quite  dry; 

For  thee,  that  heaven  my  thought  may  share, 

Forget — how  false!  and  think — how  fair! 

Yet  even  one's  final  thought  of  Modern  Love, 
poignant  and  dramatic  as  its  human  tragedy  is, 
is  not  of  the  individuals — it  is: 

We  saw  the  swallows  gathering  in  the  sky. 

And  in  the  osier-isle  we  heard  their  noise.  .  .  . 

that  sonnet  superbly  praised  by  Swinburne  as  only 
he  could  praise. 

Meredith,  remarkable  and  fascinating  personality 
as,  of  course,  he  was,  never  seemed  to  have  any 
individual  history.  If  ever  Nature,  in  the  phrase 
of  Matthew  Arnold,  took  the  pen  and  wrote,  the 
hand  was  not  Wordsworth's,  the  hand  was  George 
Meredith's.  Wordsworth  was  a  Puritan  with  a 
great  literary  gift,  moralising  upon  Nature.  Mere- 
dith was  a  pagan — in  the  best  sense  of  the  word, 
[  244] 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  POETRY 

understanding  licr,  one  of  her  cliildrcn.  He  was 
as  his  own  Melampus,  who: 

With  love  exceeding  a  simple  love  of  the  things 

That  glide  in  grasses  and  rubble  of  woody  wreck; 
Or  change  their  perch  on  a  beat  of  quivering  wings 

From  branch  to  branch,  only  restful  to  pipe  and  peck ; 
Or,  bristled,  curl  at  a  touch  their  snouts  in  a  ball; 

Or  cast  their  web  between  bramble  and  thorny  hook; 
The  good  physician  Melampus,  loving  them  all, 

Among  them  walked,  as  a  scholar  who  reads  a  book. 

Wordsworth  never  wrote: 

Lovely  are  the  curves  of  the  white  owl  sweeping 
Wavy  in  the  dusk  lit  by  one  large  star, 

and  he  never  wrote  anything  more  filled  with  magic 
of  the  Nature  he  loved.  But  comparisons  are 
proverbial.  Wordsworth  loved  Nature  like  a 
preacher.  Meredith  loved  her  like  a  man — or, 
perhaps,  I  should  say,  like  the  Great  God  Pan — 
of  whom,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  he  was  an  incarna- 
tion.    There  is  the  significance  of  his  poetry. 

Ill 

GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  POETRY 

What  George  Meredith  meant  to  young  minds 
some  twenty  or  thirty  years  ago  can  hardly,  I  sup- 
pose, be  realised  by  the  more  sophisticated  young 
minds  of  to-day — young  minds  that  have  been  born 

[245] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

and  grown  up  in  a  spiritual  atmosphere  largely  of 
George  Meredith's  creation,  and  have  been  nour- 
ished on  writers  who,  almost  as  much  as  his  own 
books,  are  emanations  of  his  Jovelike  brain. 

There  were,  so  to  say,  many  secret  societies  of 
literature  in  those  days — freemasonries  of  serious, 
enthusiastic  youth,  more  or  less  affiliated.  There 
was  the  secret  society  of  Walt  Whitman.  Shall  I 
ever  forget  the  evening — of  which,  I  confess,  I  have 
written  before — when  two  such  enthusiastic  youths, 
on  tramp  through  the  English  countryside,  arrived  at 
the  drizzling  end  of  the  day  at  the  welcome  shelter 
of  an  inn,  and  entering  a  dreary  and  apparently  de- 
serted coffee-room,  found,  to  their  intense  astonish- 
ment, a  copy  of  Leaves  of  Grass  lying  on  a  table! 
Who  on  earth  could  it  belong  to  in  that  outlandish 
bucolic  spot? 

As  we  vociferously  gave  vent  to  our  delighted 
surprise,  an  arm-chair  turned  around  from  the 
fireside  at  the  far  end  of  the  room,  and  a  pleasant 
voice  exclaimed,  "So  you  know  Whitman!"  And 
then,  of  course,  we  sat  up  till  the  morning  star,  in 
rapt,  transfiguring  talk.  Let  us  build  three  taber- 
nacles! Such  meetings  in  those  days  meant  life- 
long friendships,  as  doubtless  they  still  mean  to 
youth  with  other  more  recent  enthusiasms. 

Then,  of  course,  there  was  the  secret  society  of 
FitzGerald,  the  secret  society  of  Pater,  the  secret 
I  246] 


GEORGE   MEREDITH'S   POETRY 

society  of  Stevenson — of  course  we  always  said 
"R.  L.  S." 

But  perhaps  the  secret  society  that  prided  itself 
most  on  its  mysterious  aristocracy  was  the  secret 
society  of  George  Meredith.  To  belong  to  "that 
acute  and  honourable  minority"  that  cherished 
"Richard  Feverel"  as  the  Bible  of  Young  Love, 
and  was  able,  so  to  speak,  to  read  "The  Egoist"  in 
the  original,  was  to  feel  one's  self  something  like 
a  Rosicrucian  of  literature.  But  this  was  to  belong 
merely  to  the  outer  circle. 

As  in  all  mysterious  orders,  there  was,  in  the 
case  of  Meredith,  an  inner  circle  of  illuminati,  who 
looked  somewhat  patronisingly  on  those  who  only 
knew  him  by  his  novels.  For  them  the  last  word 
of  the  Master  was  in  his  poetry,  in  "Modern  Love," 
then  in  a  rare  first  edition,  and  in  the  incomparably 
rarer  "Poems"  of  1851.  One  might  hope  to  possess 
the  first,  and  then  only,  edition  of  "Modern  Love," 
but  one  could  only  hope  to  catch  sight  of  the 
"Poems"  of  1851  in  the  library  of  some  rich  col- 
lector friend,  who  might,  if  he  were  particularly 
human,  consent  to  let  us  take  it  home  over  night. 

One  phase  of  our  Meredith  worship  was  indigna- 
tion that  so  great  a  master  had  so  long  suffered 
the  neglect  not  only  of  the  public  but  of  the  critics, 
though  at  the  same  time  we  were  proud  as  peacocks 
to  have  him  all  to  ourselves.     Actually,  as  we  shall 

[247] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

have  further  occasion  to  consider,  Mr.  Meredith  had 
not  been  so  neglected  by  the  critics  as  in  our  young 
championship  we  supposed.  He  had  been  gener- 
ously recognised  by  such  minds  as  George  Eliot, 
Swinburne,  James  Thomson,  Mark  Pattison,  long 
before  we  were  born;  but  of  that  most  of  us  were 
unaware;  so  we  regarded  with  unutterable  contempt 
a  world  that  apparently  knew  him  not — though, 
as  I  said,  inwardly  rejoicing  that  he  was  our  own — 
a  garden  enclosed,  a  spring  shut  up,  a  fountain  sealed. 
In  the  volume  *  entitled  Poems  Written  in  Early 
Youth,  just  published  by  Messrs.  Scribner,  the 
gate  of  that  old  enchanted  garden  is  thrown  open 
to  the  world,  so  that  that  mythical  person  who  runs 
may  read.  The  volume  contains  the  whole  of  that 
precious  185 1  "Poems,"  all  the  poems  from  "Mod- 
ern Love"  (first  edition)  except  "Modern  Love" 
itself,  and  "Scattered  Poems"  gathered  from  old 
magazines  and  newspapers.  In  publishing  this  vol- 
ume Messrs.  Scribner  do  a  notable  service  to  lov- 
ers of  poetry,  for  that  185 1  volume — although 
Mr.    Meredith   in   later   years,    with   characteristic 

*  Poems  Written  in  Early  Youth:  Poems  from  Modern  Love 
and  Scattered  Poems.  By  George  Meredith.  New  York: 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 

George  Meredith:  Some  Early  Appreciations.  Selected  by 
Mavirice  Buxton  Forman.     New  York:  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 

Last  Poems.  By  George  Meredith.  New  York:  Charles 
Scribner's  Sons. 

[  248  ] 


GEORGE   MEREDITH'S   POETRY 

perversity,  would  not  hear  it  mentioned — contains 
some  of  the  loveliest  poetry  he  ever  wrote.  To 
think  that  in  that  dingy,  unpromising-looking  vol- 
ume, "Love  in  the  Valley,"  loveliest  of  modern  love 
poems,  saw  the  light  for  the  first  time  !  Is  there  any 
wonder  that  the  young  enthusiasts  of  whom  I  have 
spoken  regarded  the  little  book  as  one  of  the  most 
precious  of  all  unattainable  bibliophilistic  things? 

And  how  much  more  there  was  in  it  thrilling  with 
the  same  pure  rapture  of  young  love,  a  rapture  which 
Meredith  more  than  any  other  poet  makes  one  feel 
is  a  part  of  nature's  own  creative  rapture — one 
with  the  wild  rose,  one  with  the  soaring  lark,  one 
with  the  tumult  of  passionate  waters,  one  with  the 
soft  thunder  of  the  west  wind  roaring  through  the 
spring  woodland. 

Take,  for  example,  this  song  of  "  Angelic  Love  " : 

Angelic  love  that  stoops  with  heavenly  lips 

To  meet  its  earthly  mate; 
Heroic  love  that  to  its  sphere's  eclipse 

Can  dare  to  join  its  fate 
With  one  beloved  devoted  human  heart, 
And  share  with  it  the  passion  and  the  smart, 

The  undying  bliss 

Of  its  most  fleeting  kiss; 

The  fading  grace 

Of  its  most  sweet  embrace: — 

Angelic  love,   heroic  love! 

Whose  birth  can  only  be  above, 

I  249  ] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

Whose  wandering  must  be  on  earth, 

Whose  haven  where  it  first  had  birth  ! 

Love  that  can  part  with  all  but  its  own  worth, 

And  joy  in  every  sacrifice 

That  beautifies  its  Paradise 
And  gently  like  a  golden-fruited  vine 
With  earnest  tenderness  itself  consign, 
And  creeping  up  deliriously  entwine  ! 

Its  dear  delicious  arms 
Round  the  beloved  being  ! 

With  fair  unfolded  charms. 
All-trusting,  and  all-seeing — 
Grape-laden  with  full  bunches  of  young  wine  ! 
While  to  the  panting  heart's  dry  yearning  drouth 
Buds  the  rich  dewy  mouth — 

Tenderly  uplifted, 

Like  two  rose  leaves,  drifted 
Down  in  a  long  warm  sigh  of  the  sweet  South  ! 
Such  love,  such  love  is  thine. 
Such  heart  is  mine 
O  thou  of  mortal  visions  most  divine  ! 

I  think  it  would  be  hardly  possible  to  find  a  love 
lyric  in  English  which  more  rapturously  embodies 
"the  love  where  earth  and  heaven  meet"  in  the 
mysterious  embrace  of  soul  and  sense.  In  fact  in 
the  poetry  of  no  other  English  poet  do  I  find  just 
this  quality  of  the  fusion  of  so-called  earthly  passion 
and  spiritual  love — a  quality  which  is  seen  to  be 
Meredith's  most  characteristic  possession  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end  of  his  work.  We  will  note 
[250] 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S   POETRY 

it  still  in  his  "last  poems"  as  here  in  his  first,  and  it 
makes  the  noble  vitality  of  all  his  novels.  It  flowers 
in  lovely  profusion  throughout  this  first  book  of  his, 
and  I  would  I  had  space  to  quote  more  of  the  songs 
scattered  here  and  there  among  more  ambitious 
poems  of  great  beauty  and  power;  poems  on  classical 
themes  such  as  "Daphne,"  "The  Rape  of  Aurora," 
and  "The  Shipwreck  of  Idomeneus";  poems  in 
which  the  various  myths  are  revitalised  by  the  same 
spirit  of  passionate  interpretation  which  Meredith 
applied  to  the  whole  of  life,  from  star  to  beetle. 
However,  I  must  find  room  for  this  tender  song: 

I  cannot  lose  thee  for  a  day, 
But  like  a  bird  with  restless  wing 

My  heart  will  find  thee  far  away, 
And  on  thy  bosom  fall  and  sing. 

My  nest  is  here,  my  rest  is  here; — 
And  in  the  lull  of  wind  and  rain 
Fresh  voices  make  a  sweet  refrain : 
"His  rest  is  there,  his  nest  is  there." 

With  thee  the  wind  and  sky  are  fair. 
But  parted,  both  are  strange  and  dark; 

And  treacherous  the  quiet  air 

That  holds  me  singing  like  a  lark, 

O  shield  my  love,  strong  arm  above! 
Till  in  the  hush  of  wind  and  rain. 
Fresh  voices  make  a  rich  refrain, 
"The  arm  above  will  shield  thy  love." 

One  curious   thing  to   note  about   these   songs, 
[251] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

when  one  remembers  the  cryptic  and  crabbed  style 
of  Meredith's  later  poetry,  is  their  singing  quality, 
their  gay,  liquid  rhythms.  Who  that  only  knows  his 
later  verse  would  have  thought  that  Meredith  once 
sang  Hke  this: 

Under  boughs  of  breathing  May, 
In  the  mild  spring-time  I  lay, 
Lonely,  for  I  had  no  love; 
And  the  sweet  birds  all  sang  for  pity — 
Cuckoo,  lark,  and  dove. 

To  turn  to  the  purely  nature  poems,  this  young 
volume  contains  the  superb  "South- West  Wind  in 
the  Woodland,"  in  which  the  manner,  though  some- 
what simpler,  is  almost  identical  with  that  of  the 
"Songs  and  Lyrics  of  the  Joy  of  Earth,"  written 
many  years  after.  Here  are  the  same,  almost 
stern,  virility  of  phrase,  the  same  lightning  pictures, 
— a  whole  world  of  natural  observation  compressed 
into  a  single  line — or  even  word — the  same  dare-devil 
imagery.  Who  ever  wrote  of  nature  like  this  except 
Meredith: 

The  great  South-West  drives  o'er  the  earth 
And  loosens  all  his  roaring  robes 
Behind  him,  over  heath  and  moor. 

Now  whirring  like  an  eagle's  wing 
Preparing  for  a  wide  blue  flight; 

I  252  ] 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  POETRY 

Now    flapping   like    a   sail    that    tacks 
And  chides  the  wet  bewildered  mast; 
Now  screaming  like  an  anguished  thing 
Chased  close  by  some  down-breathing  beak; 
Now  wailing  like  a  breathing  heart, 
That  will  not  wholly  break,  but  hopes 
With  hope  that  knows  itself  in  vain; 
Now  threatening  like  a  storm-charged  cloud; 
Now  cooing  like  a  woodland  dove; 
Now  up  again  in  roar  and  wrath 
High  soaring  and  wide  sweeping;  now 
With  sudden  fury  dashing  down 
Full  force  on  the  awaiting  woods. 

In  a  fascinating  series  of  "Pastorals"  he  sings  of 
nature  in  her  tenderer,  more  voluptuous  moods — 
and  was  the  voluptuousness,  the  intoxication,  of  a 
ramble  through  a  summer  day  ever  sung  before  or 
since  like  this  ? 

Summer  glows  warm  on  the  meadows;  then  come  let  us 

roam  thro'  them  gaily, 
Heedless  of  heat  and  the  hot-kissing  sun,  and  the  fear  of 

dark  freckles. 
Never  one  kiss  will  he  give  on  a  neck  or  a  lily-white 

forehead. 
Chin,  hand,  or  bosom  uncovered,  all  panting,  to  take 

the  chance  coolness — 
But  full  sure  the  fiery  pressure  leaves  seal  of  espousal. 
Heed  him   not;  come,  tho'  he   kiss   till  the   soft  little 

upper  lip  loses 
Half  its  pure  whiteness,  just  speck'd  where  the  curve 

of  the  rosy  mouth  reddens. 

[  253  ] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

Come,  let  him  kiss,  let  him  kiss,  and  his  kisses  shall 

make  thee  the  sweeter. 
Thou  art  no  nun,  veiled  and  vowed;  doomed  to  nourish 

a  withering  pallor  ! 
City  exotics  beside  thee  would  show  like  bleached  linen 

at  midday. 
Hung  upon  hedges  of  eglantine  !    Thou  in  the  freedom 

of  nature. 
Full  of  her  beauty  and  wisdom,  gentleness,  joyance,  and 

kindness  ! 
Come,  and  like  bees  will  we  gather  the  rich  golden  honey 

of  noontide, 
Deep  in  the  sweet  summer  meadows  border'd  by  hillside 

and  river; 
Lined  with   long  trenches  half   hidden,  where  smell  of 

white  meadow-sweet,  sweetest 
Blissfully  hovers — O  sweetest  !   but  pluck  it   not,  even 

in  the  tenderest 
Grasp  it  will  lose  breath  and  wither;  like  many,  not 

made  for  a  posy. 

See,  the  sun  slopes  down  to  the  meadows,  where  all  the 

flowers  are  falling  ! 
Falling  unhymned,  for  the  nightingale  scarce  ever  charms 

the  long  twilight: 
Mute  with  the   cares   of   the  nest;   only  known  by   a 

"chuck,  chuck,"  and  dovelike 
Call  of  content;    but    the    finch    and    the    linnet    and 

blackcap  pipe  loudly. 
Round  on  the  western   hillside  warbles  the  rich-billed 

ouzel. 
And  the  shrill  throstle  is  filling   the  tangled  thickening 

copses; 

[254] 


GEORGE   MEREDITH'S   POETRY 

Singing  o'er  hyacinths  hid  and  most  honey 'd  of  flowers, 

white  field-rose. 
Joy  thus   to   revel    all   day  in   the  grass   of    our   own 

beloved  country; 
Revel    all   day,  till  the  lark   mounts   at   eve   with   his 

sweet  "tirra-lirra," 
Trilling  delightfully.     See,  on  the  river  the  slow-rippled 

surface 
Shining;  the  slow  ripple  broadens  in  circles;  the  bright 

surface  smoothens. 
Now  it  is  flat  as  the  leaves  of  the  yet  unseen  water-lily. 
There    dart    the   lives  of    a   day,   ever-varying    tactics 

fantastic. 
There,  by  the  wet-mirrored  osiers,  the  emerald  wing  of 

the  kingfisher 
Flashes,  the  fish  in  his  beak!    There  the  dabchick  dived, 

and  the  motion 
Lazily  undulates  all  through  the  tall  standing  army  of 

rushes. 

There  is  no  need  to  draw  attention  to  the  marvel- 
lous particularity  of  observation  of  natural  things 
shown  in  this  passage.  Grant  Allen  used  to  say  that 
Meredith  was  the  most  learned  naturalist  in  England, 
and  that,  whenever  he  was  in  doubt  about  some  bird 
or  flower,  he  would  walk  over  and  consult  Meredith; 
for  they  were  near  neighbours. 

Now  let  us  pause  and  think  that  these  remarkable 
poems  were  printed,  not  written,  when  Meredith  was 
but  a  lad  of  23;  and,  of  course,  they  must,  therefore, 
have   been   written,   many   of   them,    long   before. 

[25s] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

Such  marvellous  precocity  of  maturity  is  surely 
unmatched  by  the  record  of  any  other  English  poet 
— not  forgetting  Keats. 

How,  one  asks,  was  this  marvellous  boy  received  by 
his  contemporaries?  Owing  to  a  happy  inspiration 
of  Mr.  Maurice  Buxton  Forman,  the  answer  is  here 
to  our  hand,  for  in  a  volume  entitled  "  George 
Meredith,  Some  Early  Appreciations,"  Mr,  Forman 
has  collected  together  various  contemporary  notices 
of  Meredith's  books  as  they  from  time  to  time 
appeared.  The  volume  includes  two  long,  as  we 
say,  "important,"  notices  of  these  185 1  poems, 
one  by  William  Michael  Rossetti  and  the  other  by 
Charles  Kingsley.  Both  treat  the  young  poet  with 
considerable,  indeed  surprising,  seriousness — when 
one  remembers  that  it  was  a  young  poet's  first  book — 
and  both  recognise,  in  varying  degrees,  his  great 
gifts.  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  writes  somewhat  ponder- 
ously and  patronisingly,  after  his  wont,  and  makes 
an  elaborate  comparison  between  young  Meredith 
and  Keats.  Kingsley  also  incidentally  compares 
him  with  Keats.  Strange  nowadays  to  see  Meredith 
described  as  a  "  Keatsian  " ! 

"The  main  quality  of  Mr.  Meredith's  poems," 
continues  Mr.  Rossetti,  "is  warmth — warmth  of 
emotion,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  of  imagination, 
like  the  rich  mantling  blush  on  a  beautiful  face,  or 
a  breath  glowing  upon  your  cheek.     That  he  is  young 

[256] 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  POETRY 

will  be  as  unmistakably  apparent  to  the  reader  as  to 
ourself;  on  which  score  various  shortcomings  and 
crudities,  not  less  than  some  excess  of  this  attribute, 
claim  indulgence." 

Mr.  Rossetti  concludes  with  this  patronising  pas- 
sage, which  has  a  pathetically  ridiculous  look  to-day: 

We  do  not  expect  ever  quite  to  enrol  Mr.  Mere- 
dith among  the  demigods  or  heroes;  and  we  hesitate, 
for  the  reason  just  given,  to  say  that  we  count  on 
greater  things  from  him;  but  we  shall  not  cease  to 
look  for  his  renewed  appearance  with  hope,  and 
to  hail  it  with  extreme  pleasure,  so  long  as  he  may 
continue  to  produce  poems  equal  to  the  best  in  this 
first  volume. 

How  sad  and  chapfallen  old  criticism  has  a  way 
of  looking,  and  how  pitiably  silly;  and  it  is  in  many 
such  passages  as  this  that  Mr.  Forman's  book  affords 
one  much  cruel  entertainment. 

Charles  Kingsley's  criticism  causes  no  such  smile. 
Among  his  many  noble  qualities  Kingsley  enjoyed 
what  Swinburne  has  called  "the  noble  pleasure  of 
praising";  and  he  was,  at  the  same  time,  a  critic  of 
great  insight.  In  his  review  of  the  young  Meredith 
he  shows  himself  a  critic  of  no  little  foresight,  too. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  his  review,  which  was 
entitled  "This  Year's  Song  Crop,"  and  appeared  in 
Fraser^s  Magazine,  December,  185 1,  included  re- 
views, too,  of  Mrs.  Browning's  "Casa  Guidi  Win- 

17  [  257  ] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

dows"    and    Thomas    Lovell    Beddoes's    collected 
poems. 

This,  we  understand  [begins  Kingsley],  is  Mr. 
George  Meredith's  first  appearance  in  print;  if  it 
be  so,  there  is  very  high  promise  in  the  unambitious 
little  volume  which  he  has  sent  forth  as  his  first- 
fruits.  It  is  something  to  have  written  already  some 
of  the  most  delicious  little  love  poems  which  we 
have  seen  born  in  England  in  the  last  few  years, 
reminding  us  by  their  richness  and  quaintness  of 
tone  of  Herrick;  yet  with  a  depth  of  thought  and 
feeling  which  Herrick  never  reached.  Health  and 
sweetness  are  two  qualities  which  run  through  all 
these  poems.  They  are  often  overloaded — often 
somewhat  clumsy  and  ill-expressed — often  wanting 
polish  and  finish;  but  they  are  all  genuine,  all 
melodiously  conceived,  if  not  always  melodiously 
executed. 

Kingsley  then  proceeds  to  quote  two  songs,  one 
of  which  I  quoted  above,  "I  Cannot  Lose  Thee  for 
a  Day."  Continuing,  he  says:  "In  Mr.  Meredith's 
Pastorals,  too,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  sweet,  whole- 
some writing,  more  like  real  pastorals  than  those  of 
any  young  poet  whom  we  have  had  for  many  a 
year." 

So  one  sees  that  Meredith  fared  far  better  with  his 
first  volume  than  most  youngsters. 

It  would  be  most  entertaining  to  follow  Buxton 
Forman  through  his  other  "retrospective  views"; 

[258] 


GEORGE  MEREDITH'S  POETRY 

to  quote  George  Eliot's  enthusiastic  praise  of  "The 
Shaving  of  Shagpat,"  to  tell  what  The  London  Times 
of  the  morning  of  October  14,  1859,  had  to  say  of 
"Richard  Feverel,"  or  The  Saturday  Review  of 
"Evan  Harrington,"  or  The  Morning  Post  of 
"Rhoda  Fleming";  but  we  must  forego  these 
delights.  The  reader  must  buy  the  book  for 
himself  and  take  a  curious  object-lesson  in  the 
making  of  fame.  Particularly  would  I  draw  his 
attention  to  the  masculine  reviews  of  James 
Thomson,  the  tragic  poet  of  "The  City  of  Dread- 
ful Night,"  one  of  the  earliest  and  most  militant 
Meredithians. 

And  now  I  take  in  my  hand  the  little  sheaf  of 
"Last  Poems,"  the  gleanings  from  so  majestic  a 
harvest.  I  said  that  we  should  fmd  in  these  last 
poems  the  same  indomitable  rapture  as  in  the 
first,  and  here  it  is,  no  whit  chilled  by  the  years; 
and  here  still  is  the  old  bloom,  the  old,  stalwart, 
passionate  trust  in  the  strong,  sweet  earth,  the  old 
valiant  faith  in  "the  upper  glories,"  and  the  old  sure 
reliance  that  the  two  are  one. 

You  seek  in  vain  here  for  the  pathos  or  palsy  of 
age.  No,  it  was  an  old  man  wrote  this,  a  very 
old  man,  this  of  "The  Wild  Rose": 

High  climbs  June's  wild  rose, 

Her  bush  all  blooms  in  a  swarm. 
And  swift  from  the  bud  she  blows, 
[259] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

In  a  day  when  the  wooer  is  warm; 
Frank  to  receive  and  give, 

Her  bosom  is  open  to  bee  and  sun; 

Pride  she  has  none, 
Nor  shame  she  knows; 
Happy  to  live. 

It  was  an  old  man  who  wrote  this: 

Open  horizons  round, 

O  mounting  mind,  to  scenes  unsung, 

Wherein  shall  walk  a  lusty  Time; 

Our  earth  is  young; 

Of  measure  without  bound; 

Infinite  are  the  heights  to  climb, 

The  depths  to  sound. 

The  three  great  spiritual  poets  of  the  Victorian 
era — Tennyson,  Browning,  and  Meredith — all  died 
very  old  men,  and  each  of  them  died  valiantly  singing 
the  song  of  victorious  life — a  thought  to  make  a 
younger  generation  of  pessimists  ashamed  of  itself. 

Of  the  three  the  faith  of  Meredith  is,  for  me, 
the  most  convincing,  for  it  was  drawn  from  no 
formal  creed  or  philosophy,  and  it  was  softened  by 
no  suspicion  of  sentimental  optimism.  He  drew 
it  direct  from  nature's  heart — nature,  which  he 
has  finely  called  "our  only  visible  friend."  Here, 
in  his  last  words  to  us,  he  emphasises  the  faith  in 
which  he  lived  his  life,  a  faith  that  fills  all  his  work 
with  a  divine  energy  and  a  shining  courage: 
[260] 


IN  MEMORIAM 


This  love  of  nature,  that  allows  to  take 
Irregularity  for  harmony, 

Of  larger  scope  than  our  hard  measures  make, 
Cherish  it  as  thy  school  for  when  on  thee 
The  ills  of  life  descend. 

It  was  an  iron  faith,  but  a  true  faith  can  be  made 
of  no  other  metal. 

IV 
GEORGE  MEREDITH:    IN  MEMORIAM 

As  I  walked  through  the  spring  woods  this  morn- 
ing I  saw  the  wild  white  cherry  in  blossom,  and  I  said 
to  myself,  "The  wild  white  cherry  blooms  again — 
and  IMeredith  died  yesterday."  Readers  of  Meredith's 
poetry — all  too  few — will  know  what  I  meant,  will 
remember  that  for  him  the  wild  white  cherry  was  the 
symbol  of  spiritual  resurrection,  and  will  recall  with 
what  striking  effect  he  used  it  in  that  cryptic  but 
sternly  bracing  poem,  "A  Faith  on  Trial."  In  that 
poem  he  tells  how,  stricken  to  earth  with  a  great  grief 
that  had  seemed  to  take  away  all  his  faith  in  life  and 
God  and  nature,  he  walked  up  through  the  spring 
woodland  with  aching  heart,  and  there,  suddenly,  he 
came  upon  a  wild  white  cherry  which  had  fought  its 
way  through  the  rocks,  and,  in  spite  of  every  re- 
pressive force  against  it  held  up  its  banner  of  irre- 
pressible blossom.  In  this  wild  white  cherry  Mere- 
f  261I 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

dith  saw  a  symbol  of  the  indomitable  endurance  and 
immortal  energy  of  the  human  spirit,  a  glimpse  of 
the  divine  hope  that,  as  well  as  tears,  dwells  in  all 
mortal  things.  And  he  went  down  the  hill  again, 
with  his  heart  comforted  and  his  faith  in  life  re- 
stored. Meredith's  poems,  of  all  his  writings,  were 
nearest  to  his  heart,  and  the  strange,  though  not  en- 
tirely unaccountable,  neglect  of  them  was  the  only 
point  where  his  lordly  philosophic  indifference  to 
public  opinion  was  liable  to  break  down. 

Perhaps  I  may  be  permitted  a  personal  remi- 
niscence in  illustration  of  this.  The  incident  seems 
amusing  to  me  now,  but  then  it  seemed  only  filled 
with  the  blushes  of  embarrassment;  for  I  was  very 
young,  and  had  gone  with  awe  and  adoration  to 
spend  a  day  or  two,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  on  Parnassus 
Hill,  at  Meredith's  country  home  at  Dorking,  in 
Surrey.  My  visit  had  been  one  long  dream  of  sitting 
at  the  feet  of  the  master,  whom  above  all  I  wor- 
shipped, a  visit  almost  speechless  on  my  part,  but 
on  his  filled  with  that  wonderful  talk  for  which  he 
was,  of  course,  famous.  He  had  taken  me  up  to  the 
little  chalet,  on  the  hillside  above  his  house,  where 
he  did  his  writing,  and  had  actually  read  to  me,  with 
his  own  voice,  from  his  own  manuscript,  chapters 
from  TJie  Amazing  Marriage,  which  he  was  then 
writing.  Think  of  it!  I  can  hardly  think  of  it 
to-day  without  tears.  When  he  had  finished  reading, 
[262] 


IN  MEMORIAM 


I  timidly  asked  him,  for  I  was  a  great  collector  in 
those  days,  if  he  would  give  me  a  page  of  his  manu- 
script, any  manuscript.  He  assented  with  royal 
geniality.  Of  course  his  manuscripts  meant  nothing 
to  him.  And  then  we  went  down  the  hill  to  the 
house  for  luncheon,  at  which  one  or  two  other  guests 
were  present.  My  \dsit  had  come  to  an  end,  and 
my  train  left  soon  after  luncheon,  and  all  the  time 
my  mind  was  full  of  my  promised  manuscript  and 
anxiety  to  secure  it  before  I  went.  So,  toward  the 
end  of  the  meal,  I  ventured  to  remind  Mr.  Meredith 
of  his  promise.  But,  O  of  all  flat-footed,  unfor- 
tunate speeches,  this  was  the  way  I  asked  him: 

"  Of  course,  Mr.  Meredith,"  I  said,  "  I  don't  ask 
for  anything  important.  If  I  might  only  have  a 
little  poem — "  Unhappy  boy!  The  words  were 
scarcely  out  of  my  mouth  when  Meredith  turned 
on  me  with  a  look  of  Olympian  scorn,  which  well 
became  that  grand  manner  at  all  times  his,  and 
poured  upon  my  unlucky  head  a  tirade  of  that  fan- 
atstic  sarcasm  of  which  he  was  past  master.  I 
cannot  reproduce  it  here,  for  it  was  aerily  elaborate 
as  his  conversational  manner  was,  but  the  text  on 
which  he  mercilessly  fantasticated  was: 

"O,  I  see!    You  don't  want  anything  important 
— nothing  important — only  one  of  my  poems.     Ah ! " 
And  then  he  began,  utterly  indifferent  to  my  embar- 
rassment, wilfully   cruel,  and    ignoring  articles  of 
[263] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

mine  on  his  poetry  which,  that  very  day,  he  had 
praised — articles  boyish  enough,  but  filled  at  least 
with  enthusiastic  appreciation.  The  other  guests 
were  sorry  for  me,  and  begged  for  mercy.  I  tried 
to  explain  that  I  had  meant  that  I  did  not  expect 
the  manuscript  of  "Richard  Feverel"  or  "The 
Egoist " ;  but  it  was  all  to  no  purpose.  I  never  got 
my  manuscript. 

Yet  one  cannot  blame  Meredith  for  being  testy 
about  the  neglect  of  his  poetry.  That  "Modern 
Love"  should  have  remained  in  a  forgotten  first 
edition  for  over  twenty  years  is  one  of  the  inscrutable 
mysteries  of  literary  appreciation.  Of  course  the 
reason  that  will  be  offered  for  its  neglect,  and  for 
the  neglect  of  Meredith's  other  poetry,  is  that  the 
expression  is  often  obscure  and  sibylline — which  is 
true,  but  no  more  true  than  it  is  of  Browning;  and 
there  is  much  of  Meredith's  poetry  that  is  limpid 
clear.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  another  poem 
more  filled  with  fragrant  nature  pictures  and  more 
haunting  music  than  "Love  in  the  Valley,"  which 
is  simplicity  itself.  Nor  is  there  in  English  any 
nature  poetry  with  quite  the  same  quality  at  once 
of  wood  magic  and  authentic  earthiness — the  sweet 
peaty  smell  of  earth,  berries,  and  bearded  mosses 
and  all  the  aromatic  rough  underbrush  of  things. 
And  yet  you  may  meet  many  a  lover  of  poetry  before 
you  meet  one  who  knows  "The  Woods  of  Wester- 
[264] 


IN   MEMORIAM 


main"  or  the  other  "Songs  and  Lyrics  of  the  Joy 
of  Earth." 

The  final  significance  of  Meredith's  writings, 
whether  poetry  or  prose,  is  that  he  was  a  great  poet- 
philosopher  who  believed  in  the  spiritual  nature  of 
the  material  universe — by  no  means  an  optimist  in 
the  cheap  sense;  but  a  stern,  joyous  thinker  whose 
faith  held  every  possible  doubt  in  solution,  one  who 
flinched  at  no  fact,  and  one  who  feared  no  ghost. 
And  this  philosophy  of  his  he  expressed  by  means 
of  a  versatile  apparatus  of  gifts  which  belonged  to  no 
other  man  of  his  time.  He  could  express  it  through 
a  divine  love  story  such  as  "Richard  Feverel,"  or 
through  a  sardonic  comedy  such  as  "The  Egoist," 
or  through  a  story  of  stern  action  such  as  "  Vittoria." 
For  sheer  wit,  of  course,  there  is  no  novelist  in 
English  that  approaches  Iiim,  and  the  debt  of  his 
younger  contemporaries  to  him  for  inspiration,  such 
contemporaries  as  Stevenson  and  Oscar  Wilde,  is 
beyond  calculation.  He  was  the  secret  sustaining 
energy  behind  most  modern  English  thinking,  and 
the  greatest  spiritual  force  of  our  time.  As  for 
Mr.  Henry  James,  he  may  literally  be  said  to  have 
sprung,  Minerva-like,  from  the  brain  of  George 
Meredith. 

Swinburne,  only  a  few  days  ago,  and  now  Meredith ! 
All  the  great  Victorians  gone.  It  makes  the  world 
seem  homeless,  and,  so  to  say,  shabby — for,  to 
[265] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

some  of  us  at  least,  it  was  inspiring  to  feel  that  we 
were  living  in  the  same  world  with  great  men. 
There  were  giants,  too,  in  our  days.  But  almost 
every  kind  of  giant  has  gone,  and  the  world  seems 
to  grow  smaller  every  minute.  When  Bjornson 
and  Tolstoy  go,  there  won't  be  a  great  man  left  in 
the  world. 

Well,  George  Meredith,  good-bye.  I  am  going 
to  walk  up  the  hill  again  and  look  at  the  wild  white 
cherry  in  bloom.  Perhaps,  too,  I  may  catch  a 
glimpse  of  Lucy  and  Richard  by  the  river. 


[266] 


IV 

RE-READING   HAWTHORNE 

IT  will  be  a  hundred  years  ago  this  fourth 
of  July  since  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  was 
born  at  27  Union  Street,  Salem,  Massa- 
chusetts; and  on  May  18,  1864,  he  saw  the  sun  set 
for  the  last  time.  Such  a  lapse  of  years  between  his 
day  and  ours  fairly  entitles  us,  perhaps,  to  regard 
ourselves  as  that  "posterity"  with  whose  judgment 
a  writer's  fame  is  supposed  to  rest.  Forty  years 
is  the  copyright  life  of  a  book,  but,  alas !  the  books 
are  few  indeed  that  do  not  expire  before  their  copy- 
rights. The  present  is  an  appropriate  moment  to 
ask:  how  is  it  with  Hawthorne?  How  do  his  books 
wear?  What  is  his  significance  in  literature? 
Most  of  us,  I  suppose,  read  his  works  when  we  were 
young, — too  young,  perhaps,  to  appreciate  the  fine- 
ness of  his  art, — but,  now  that  we  are  not  quite  so 
young,  how  do  his  books  bear  reading  again, 
and  with  what  permanence  of  appeal  do  they  sup- 
port his  fame?  To  me,  fresh  from  such  re-read- 
ing, only  one  answer  seems  possible,  the  answer 
of  gratitude  for  a  classic.  The  re-afiirmation  of  a 
classic  in  a  changing  world  is  no  small  matter  to 
I  267] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

those  for  whom  literature  is  no  insignificant  part 
of  life.  When  so  much  plays  us  false,  after  all  it  is 
something  to  know  that  our  faith  in  The  Scarlet 
Letter  was  not  one  of  the  many  illusions.  Yes! 
Hawthorne,  it  is  good  to  find,  is  one  of  the  realities, 
and  likely  to  remain  one  of  the  permanent  sources 
of  human  pleasure. 

Pleasure!  Hawthorne  came  of  a  stock  for  which 
such  a  statement  would  seem  more  of  an  indictment 
than  a  credential.  Human  pleasure!  What  would 
the  first  Am.erican  Hathorne,  a  younger  son  of  a 
Wiltshire  family,  emigrating  to  Massachusetts  in 
1630,  Major  William  Hathorne  [it  was  Nathaniel 
who  first  sHpped  in  the  "w  "],  what  would  he, 
stern  persecutor  of  Quakers,  have  said  of  a  descend- 
ant so  trivially  distinguished?  And  his  son  John, 
even  more  grimly  religious,  and  still  gloomily 
remembered  as  a  burner  of  witches,  how  sternly 
would  he  have  disowned  so  frivolous  an  immor- 
tality! Yet,  so  cynical  is  Time,  these  two  most  con- 
spicuous figures  in  the  Hawthorne  pedigree  would 
long  since  have  been  forgotten,  had  it  not  been  for 
the  fact  that  their  blood  appears  to  have  supplied 
the  most  potent  ingredient  of  that  dark  decoction 
which  ran  in  the  veins  of  their  fanciful  descendant. 
Indeed,  the  cases  are  few  in  which  a  genius  so 
essentially  mysterious  can  superficially  be  traced 
to  his  origin,  or  so  plainly  illustrates  the  theory 
[268] 


RE-READING   HAWTHORNE 

of  transmutation  of  ancestors.  If  the  Hawthorne 
stock  was  ever  to  blossom  out  into  literature,  the 
books  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  were  certainly  its 
logical  expression.  It  is  strange  to  note  how  the 
shadows  of  these  far-away  ancestors  could  suddenly, 
after  an  interval  of  obscure  sea  captains,  throw  so 
picturesque  a  gloom  over  so  distant  a  descendant. 
Yet  the  fate  of  Nathaniel's  father,  a  sea  captain, 
who  died  of  yellow  fever  at  Surinam,  when  Nathaniel 
was  four  years  old,  undoubtedly  contributed  to  that 
shadow — if  only  indirectly  through  the  grief  of  his 
mother,  who  shut  herself  away  from  society  for 
thirty  years,  a  retirement  which  naturally  had  its 
effect  upon  the  solitary  temperament  of  her  son. 
Salem,  too,  was  a  sad,  decaying  old  town,  and  thus 
the  child  grew  up  among  hushed  whispers  and 
shadows.  As  a  mere  boy  his  melancholy  early 
expressed  itself  in  the  invention  of  weird  stories, 
which  he  always  ended  with  the  words,  "And  I'm 
never  coming  back  again";  and  his  favourite  line, 
before  he  could  talk  plainly,  was  "Stand  back,  my 
lord,  and  let  the  coffin  pass."  So,  characteristically, 
the  child  was  father  to  the  man.  Lowell  has  deftly 
described  him  as  "a  November  nature  with  a  name 
of  May  " ;  and  Hawthorne  himself,  almost  painfully 
conscious  of  the  gloomy  cast  of  his  genius,  once 
exclaimed,  "I  wish  God  had  given  me  the  faculty 
of  writing  a  sunshiny  book." 
[269] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE    REVIEWS 

Perhaps  the  involuntary  nature  of  genius  was 
never  more  significantly  illustrated  than  in  the 
case  of  this  man,  who,  while  himself  living  a  simple 
and  innocent  life,  himself  gentle,  and,  save  for 
that  harmless  meditative  melancholy,  entirely  free 
from  those  dark  ancestral  attributes  of  which  I 
have  spoken,  yet  found  his  artistic  faculty  responsive 
only  to  the  sinister  and  bizarre  in  human  material. 
A  gift  has  seldom  seemed  so  detached  from  the 
personality  of  its  possessor,  so  sheerly  a  function  of 
independent  operation;  for  a  conscience  could  hardly 
be  freer  than  Nathaniel  Hawthorne's,  yet  his  most 
successful  stories  are  all  concerned  with  the  burden 
of  sin  and  the  shadow  of  doom.  This  was,  of  course, 
the  bequest  of  ancestors  grimly  preoccupied  with 
moral  questions — questions  which,  in  the  case  of 
their  descendant,  came  to  have  a  purely  artistic 
value.  One  has  only  to  read  the  exquisitely  tran- 
quil preface  to  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse  to 
realise  how  distinct  was  the  haunted  dream-life  of  his 
books  from  the  placid  tenor  of  his  actual  days. 

In  short,  of  all  American  writers,  Hawthorne  is 
the  literary  artist  pure  and  simple,  the  greatest 
literary  artist — ^not  forgetting  Poe — that  America 
has  produced.  No  doubt  it  is  for  this  reason  that 
Hawthorne  was  so  long,  as  he  himself  says  in 
the  preface  to  Twice-told  Tales,  "the  obscurest 
man  of  letters  in  America."  As  with  his  own 
[270  J 


RE-READING   HAWTHORNE 

"Artist  of  the  Beautiful,"  his  gift  was  too  fine  to 
attract  the  general  reader,  till  at  length  in  The 
Scarlet  Letter  he  compelled  his  attention  by  the 
dramatic  use  of  a  peculiarly  American  subject. 
Here  one  may  recognise  the  fact  that  one  of  Haw- 
thorne's claims  upon  the  appreciation  of  his  country- 
men is  that  he  is  unquestionably  an  indigenous 
product,  a  genuine  American  writer.  "Out  of  the 
soil  of  New  England  he  sprang,"  says  Henry 
James,  in  a  brilliant  study  of  him  which  would  be 
perfect  were  it  not  for  a  certain  tone  of  superiority, 
somewhat  too  English  in  its  accent  for  one  American 
writer  to  use  toward  a  compatriot  so  much  greater 
than  himself;  "in  a  crevice  of  that  immitigable 
granite  he  sprouted  and  bloomed.  Half  of  the 
interest  that  he  possesses  for  an  American  reader 
with  any  turn  for  analysis  must  reside  in  his  latent 
New  England  savour." 

This,  I  think,  is  to  lay  too  much  stress  upon, 
as  well  as  to  exaggerate,  the  local  flavour  in  Haw- 
thorne; but  it  is  certain,  nevertheless,  that,  while, 
like  all  other  true  artists,  he  belongs  to  the  whole 
world,  America  has  the  right  to  say  that  no  other 
country  could  have  produced  him.  Most  other 
American  writers  might  just  as  well  have  been 
born  in  England.  There  is,  for  example,  nothing 
peculiarly  American  about  Washington  Irving,  or 
Longfellow.  But  Hawthorne  is  as  subtly  Amcri- 
I271] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

can  in  quality  as,  say,  Thackeray  is  English.  Both 
are  masters  of  English  style.  Yet  one  is  unmistak- 
ably American. 

Hawthorne's  style,  at  its  best,  is  one  of  the  most 
perfect  media  employed  by  any  writer  using  the 
English  language.  Dealing,  as  it  usually  does,  with 
an  immaterial  subject-matter,  with  dream-like 
impressions,  and  fantastic  products  of  the  imagina- 
tion, it  is  concrete  without  being  opaque, — lumi- 
nously concrete,  one  might  say.  No  other  writer 
that  I  know  of  has  the  power  of  making  his  fancies 
visible  and  tangible  without  impairing  their  delicate 
immateriahty.  If  any  writer  can  put  the  rainbow 
into  words,  and  yet  leave  it  a  rainbow,  surely  that 
writer  is  Hawthorne. 

Most  writers  having  to  treat  such  material  as  the 
favourite  material  of  Hawthorne  would  fall  back 
upon  the  impressionistic  method,  and  hint,  rather 
than  embody, — and  I  am  not  for  a  moment  de- 
preciating the  value  of  that  method.  At  the  same 
time,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  of  the  two  methods 
it  is  the  easier, — because  to  suggest  is  so  much 
easier  than  to  describe,  and  no  Httle  impressionism 
is  simply  clever  evasion  of  visual  responsibility. 
Hawthorne,  however,  is  no  such  trickster.  No 
matter  how  subtle  or  volatile  is  the  matter  to  be  ex- 
pressed, his  imagination  is  so  patiently  observant, 
and  his  literary  skill  so  answerable  to  his  imagination, 
[272] 


RE-READING   HAWTHORNE 

that  he  is  able  really  to  write  so  close  to  the  spiritual 
fact  as  to  leave  nothing  to  be  clone  by  the  reader — 
except  to  read.  Often,  as  one  reads  him,  and 
anticipates  some  approaching  matter  peculiarly 
fine  and  difficult,  he  wonders  how  the  author  can 
possibly  put  this  into  concrete  words. 

Yet,  again,  it  is  not  a  little  interesting,  even 
surprising,  to  note  how  inaffectual  is  this  delicately 
powerful  artistic  equipment  when  employed  upon 
material  which,  so  to  say,  has  not  been  ancestrally 
prepared  for  its  use.  There  are  whole  stretches 
of  Hawthorne  not  merely  flat  and  uninspired,  but 
positively  amateurish.  In  this  respect  he  reminds 
one  of  Wordsworth,  who,  at  one  moment,  is  a 
master,  and  the  next — an  absurdity.  The  artist's 
dependence  upon  his  material  was  for  a  while 
scouted  by  a  certain  school  of  critics,  but  every 
real  artist  gives  it  proof.  One  might  almost  say 
that  a  man's  artistic  material  is  no  less  born  with 
him  than  his  artistic  gift.  No  amount  of  conscious 
study  will  take  the  place  of  that  natal,  and  prenatal, 
relation  to  certain  corners  and  aspects  of  the  world 
to  the  appreciation  and  expression  of  which  an  artist 
is  destined.  Just  as  some  painters  seem  born,  like 
Millet,  to  paint  the  peasantry,  and  some,  like 
Vandyke,  to  paint  the  portraits  of  kings,  others, 
again,  like  Verestchagin,  to  paint  war,  or,  like 
Turner,  to  paint  the  sky,  just  as  surely  was  Haw- 
i8  [273] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

thorne  predestined  to  write  of  New  England  witches, 
and  New  England  cases  of  conscience,  and  to 
embody  his  psychological  and  moral  fancies. 

I  wish  I  had  the  space  to  make  an  analysis  of 
his  writings  with  this  thought  in  mind,  for  such  an 
analysis  would  provide  a  remarkable  object-lesson 
in  the  psychology  of  the  artist.  As,  however,  it 
is  part  of  my  business  here  to  say  why  Hawthorne 
is  still  read,  and  what  of  his  is  best  worth  reading, 
an  attempt  to  fulfil  this  task  will  amount  to  very 
much  the  same  thing.  To  this  end  let  us  run 
through  the  list  of  his  books.  They  follow  each 
other  in  this  order: — 

"Twice-told  Tales." 

"Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse." 

"The  Scarlet  Letter." 

"The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables." 

"A  Wonder  Book  for  Boys  and  Girls." 

"The  Blithedale  Romance." 

"The  Snow  Image,  and  Other  Twice-told  Tales." 

"English  Note-books." 

"Italian  Note-books." 

"The  Marble  Faun." 

"  Septimius  Felton." — Unfinished. 

"The  Dolliver  Romance." — Unfinished. 

Now,  of  these.  Twice-told  Tales,  Mosses  from 
an  Old  Manse,  and  The  Snow  Image,  and  Oilier 
Twice-told  Tales  might  as  well,  so  to  speak,  have 
been   bound  in  the   same  volume.    They  are  all 

[274] 


RE-READING   HAWTHORNE 

made  up  of  the  same  successes  and  the  same  faihu-es. 
Ahnost  always  you  will  find  that  the  successes  grow 
in  the  shadow,  and  are  concerned  with  the  darker 
side  of  the  spiritual  drama,  being  fantasies  and 
allegories  of  ambitious  or  troubled  souls.  Alingled 
with  them  are  pleasant  essays,  and  gracious  moral- 
ities (perhaps  a  Httle  childish) — such,  say,  as 
A  Rill  from  the  Toivn  Pump,  The  Great 
Carbuncle,  and  The  Seven  Vagabonds;  also,  to  my 
thinking,  much  over-rated  legends  of  American 
history,  such  as  Legends  of  the  Province  House. 
But  these  you  read  merely  because  the  pen  that  wrote 
them  was  seldom  capable  of  being  continuously  dull 
on  any  theme.  Indeed,  with  the  exception  of  three 
or  four  masterpieces,  these  three  books  must  be  re- 
garded either  as  experiments  or  repetitions.  These 
masterpieces,  in  my  opinion,  are : — 

"  Dr.  Heidegger's  Experiment." 
"Young  Goodman  Brown." 
"  Rappaccini's  Daughter." 
"  Feathertop." 
"  Roger  Malvin's  Burial." 
"The  Artist  of  the  Beautiful." 

Perhaps,  from  old  association,  one  may  add 
The  Great  Stone  Face.  As  for  The  Snoiv 
Image,  I  must  confess  that  it  seems  but  a  child- 
ish performance  to-day,  when  the  art  of  writing 
fancies    for   children    has    reached    so    scientific    a 

[275] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

development.  Possibly  The  Wonder  Book  still  holds 
its  place  in  the  nursery,  but  here  one  would  need 
the  more  competent  opinion  of  a  child. 

But  the  six  masterpieces!  If  Hawthorne  had 
written  nothing  else  but  these  he  would  have 
triumphantly  immortalised  himself  as  an  artist  of 
the  mysterious. 

Compare  him  with  Poe  in  this  respect,  and  note 
how  mechanically  inventive  are  the  best  of  Poe's 
stories  compared  with  the  essential  mystery  of 
Hawthorne's  imaginations.  With  all  their  detective 
brilliancy,  there  is  no  story  of  Poe's  to  be  compared 
with  Rappaccini^s  Daughter,  or  even  Young  Good- 
man Brown — an  even  more  difficult,  if  less  original, 
achievement. 

However,  one  must  not  forget  one  more  master- 
piece of  a  different  kind  before  we  pass  on  to  the 
big  books, — that  introduction  to  the  Mosses  from 
an  Old  Manse  to  which  I  have  before  made 
reference.  Here  is  a  familiar  essay  of  which 
Lamb  himself  might  have  been  proud — the  finest 
creative  essay,  I  venture  to  think,  in  American 
literature.  The  two  really  great  books  to  which 
the  small  masterpieces  led  up  are,  of  course,  TJie 
Scarlet  Letter  and  The  House  of  the  Seven 
Gables.  You  will  often  hear  expressed  what  to 
me  is  a  quite  incomprehensible  opinion — that 
The  Marble  Faun  is  Hawthorne's  real  master- 
[276] 


RE-READING  HAWTHORNE 

piece.  I  have  tried  to  read  the  book  several  times, 
and  the  result  of  each  experiment  has  been  the  same 
— I  have  felt  that  it  is  the  accidentally  celebrated 
monument  of  what  Hawthorne  could  not  do.  One 
might  call  it  ''Hawthorne's  Folly,"  so  conspicuous 
is  its  failure.  Still  it  is  a  failure  which  corroborates 
Hawthorne's  real  success,  and  is,  therefore,  critically 
important.  The  reason  of  its  popular  acceptance 
is  obvious  enough.  Hawthorne's  fame  was  of  slow 
growth.  The  world  at  large  was  only  awakening 
to  the  fact  of  his  existence  when  he  resigned  his  post 
as  American  consul  at  Liverpool,  and  on  his  way 
home  spent  some  months  of  holiday  in  Italy, — a 
country  whose  art,  at  all  events,  his  notebooks  dis- 
play him  as  temperamentally  incapable  of  appre- 
ciating. In  our  day  certain  writers  make  a  clever 
pretense  of  assimilating  local  colour.  It  matters 
little  in  what  climate,  or  among  what  people,  they 
set  their  scene.  Being  men  of  a  strolling  talent,  as 
distinct  from  men  of  a  rooted  genius,  they  are  able 
to  give  us  a  passable  imitation  of  the  real  thing. 
Hawthorne  was  different.  Few  men  of  genius 
have  been  possessed  of  so  little  talent.  He  could 
no  more  be  what  he  was  not,  or  write  what  nature 
had  not  meant  him  to  write,  than  the  nightshade 
can  impersonate  the  cowslip.  He  seemed  con- 
genitally  incapable  of  development  and  even  of 
assimilation;  and   he   himself,   as  you   will   fmd   if 

[  277] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

you  read  his  letters  and  note-books,  was  the  first 
to  be  aware  of  this  limitation.  Limitation!  I 
am  afraid  I  used  the  word  a  little  carelessly, — 
for  surely  it  is  not  limitation  which  roots  an  artist 
to  his  proper  material,  and  denies  him  the  cheap 
and  flashy  use  of  a  tourist's  observation. 

Hawthorne  in  Italy  was  the  most  simple-minded 
of  American  tourists,  and  that  he  should  have 
dared  to  base  and  background  an  important  book 
on  so  superficial  an  acquaintance  with  Italy  only 
shows  how  innocent  he  was  of  his  own  powers. 
The  "public,"  however,  knowing  and  caring  nothing 
for  these  things,  chanced  to  get  hold  of  his  name 
about  this  time,  and  Italy  being  always  a  subject 
so  vital  and  so  fragrant  that  it  hardly  matters  who 
makes  use  of  it,  it  is  easy  to  understand  why  even 
to-day  the  first  word  one  hears  about  Hawthorne 
is — The  Marble  Faun  I 

Now  my  first  word  to  a  reader  approaching 
Hawthorne  is, — do  not  read  The  Marble  Faun. 
Not  only  will  it  weary  you,  but  it  will  also  give  you 
an  unfair  impression  of  a  great  master.  When 
you  have  read  the  real  Hawthorne,  then,  if  you 
care,  you  may  read  The  Marble  Faun  as  a  study  in 
— what  even  genius  cannot  do. 

But  the  moment  we  turn  to  the  really  great 
books — to  The  Scarlet  Letter  and  The  House  oj 
the  Seven  Gables — the  sense  of  mastery  is  so 
[278] 


RE-READING  HAWTHORNE 

immediate  that  one  can  hardly  believe  that  here 
is  the  same  hand  that  wrote  The  Marble  Faun. 
How  sure  is  the  touch  from  the  first  word,  how 
subtly  pervasive  the  atmosphere,  and  how  dramatic- 
ally visualised  is  the  whole  moral  tragedy  in  either 
case,  and  not  that  merely,  but  also  every  physical 
detail,  such  as  the  pillory  on  which  Hester  stood  that 
day  with  the  sun  beating  on  the  bright  letter  blaz- 
ing upon  her  bosom,  and  on  which  Dimmesdale  and 
she  and  little  Pearl  stood  that  night  in  the  moonlight  1 
Similarly,  the  old  house  of  the  seven  gables  is  made 
so  real  to  us,  so  impressively  haunted  with  doom, 
that  actually  it  itself,  so  to  say,  is  felt  to  be  the  chief 
tragic  presence  in  the  story,  and  the  lives  lived  in 
the  gloom  mere  passing  shadows  of  hardly  more 
importance  than  the  bats  and  owls  roosting  genera- 
tion after  generation  among  its  shingles.  The  lives 
come  and  go,  but  the  old  house  stands  like  a  Greek 
fate.  And  another  surprise  of  this  remarkable 
art  is  that,  with  its  massive  breadth  and  impressive 
(one  might  almost  say  oppressive)  outlines,  it  is  at 
the  same  time  an  art  of  innumerable  fine  touches, 
fine  shades,  and  subtle  secondary  meanings.  On 
the  face  of  the  picture  there  is  the  grim,  living 
drama  of  human  fate,  so  simple  as  almost  to  seem 
crude,  but  as  one  looks  into  the  picture  how  alive 
it  becomes  with  interior  spiritual  significance,  how 
it  gleams  and  whispers  with  mysterious  hints  and 

I  279] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE    REVIEWS 

translunary   fancies,    some   necromantic    charm    of 
"woven  paces  and  of  waving  hands." 

Little  Pearl,  so  real  and  yet  so  unrea',  is  a  symbol 
of  that  elusive  quality  in  Hawthorne's  art  which 
perhaps  above  all  others  makes  him  Hawthorne. 
If  one  had  space  to  analyse  the  chapter  of  The 
Scarlet  Letter  devoted  to  Pearl, — Chapter  VI., — 
he  would  come  as  near  to  Hawthorne's  secret  as 
criticism  is  capable  of  reaching.  Indeed,  his  half- 
realistic,  half-allegoric,  method  is  nowhere  else  so 
skilfully  illustrated  as  in  his  treatment  of  this  little 
elfish  love-child  of  an  irregular  union.  Perhaps 
one  could  not  do  better,  by  way  of  illustrating  his 
method  in  a  small  compass,  than  quote  a  page 
from  this  chapter: — 

Pearl's  aspect  was  imbued  with  a  spell  of  infinite 
variety;  in  this  one  child  there  were  many  children, 
comprehending  the  full  scope  between  the  wild- 
flower  prettiness  of  a  peasant-baby,  or  the  pomp, 
in  little,  of  an  infant  princess.  Throughout  all, 
however,  there  was  a  trait  of  passion,  a  certain 
depth  of  hue,  which  she  never  lost;  and  if,  in  any 
of  her  changes,  she  had  grown  fainter  or  paler,  she 
would  have  ceased  to  be  herself — it  would  have 
been  no  longer  Pearl! 

This  outward  mutability  indicated  and  did  not 
more  than  fairly  express  the  various  properties  of 
her  inner  life.  Her  nature  appeared  to  possess 
depth,  too,  as  well  as  variety;  but — or  else  Hester's 
fears  deceived  her — it  lacked  reference  and  adapta- 
[280] 


RE-READING  HAWTHORNE 

tion  to  the  world  into  which  she  was  born.  The 
child  could  not  be  made  amenable  to  rules.  In 
giving  her  existence,  a  great  law  had  been  broken; 
and  the  result  was  a  being  whose  elements  were, 
perhaps,  beautiful  and  brilliant,  but  all  in  disorder; 
or  with  an  order  peculiar  to  themselves,  amidst  which 
the  point  of  variety  and  arrangement  was  difficult 
or  impossible  to  be  discovered.  Hester  could  only 
account  for  the  child's  character — and  even  then 
most  vaguely  and  imperfectly — by  recalling  what 
she  herself  had  been,  during  that  momentous  period 
while  Pearl  was  imbibing  her  soul  from  the  spiritual 
world,  and  her  bodily  frame  from  its  material  of 
earth.  The  mother's  impassioned  state  had  been 
the  medium  through  which  were  transmitted  to  the 
unborn  infant  the  rays  of  its  moral  life;  and,  however 
white  and  clear  originally,  they  had  taken  the  deep 
stains  of  crimson  and  gold,  the  fiery  luster,  the 
black  shadow,  and  the  untempered  light  of  the 
Intervening  substance.  Above  all,  the  warfare  of 
Hester's  spirit,  at  that  epoch,  was  perpetuated  in 
Pearl.  She  could  recognise  her  wdld,  desperate, 
defiant  mood,  the  flightiness  of  her  temper,  and 
even  some  of  the  very  cloud-shapes  of  gloom  and 
despondency  that  had  brooded  in  her  heart.  They 
were  now  illuminated  by  the  morning  radiance  of 
a  young  child's  disposition,  but  later  in  the  day 
of  earthly  existence  might  be  prolific  of  the  storm 
and  whirlwind. 

The   thought,   and,   so   to   say,   the   sure-footed 
style  of  this  passage  are  peculiarly  characteristic 
of  Hawthorne.     Pearl's  whole  nature  is  airy  meta- 
[281] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

physic  matter,  yet  Hawthorne  is  able  to  embody 
her  with  absolute  concreteness,  without  for  a  moment 
robbing  her  of  her  volatile  mystery :  such  a  certitude 
of  vision  had  his  imagination  when  working  on  its 
proper  material,  and  so  faultlessly  responsive  was 
his  literary  gift  to  his  imaginative  vision.  I  will 
not  deny  that  his  style  sometimes  seems  to  endow 
his  fancies  with  a  too  ponderable  visibility,  as  if 
a  man  should  blow  solid  bubbles,  or  so  picture  the 
rainbow  as  to  make  it  almost  appear  an  arch  of 
coloured  marble.  But  to  allow  this  is  but  to  allow 
to  Hawthorne,  as  to  any  other  artist,  the  defect 
of  his  quality.  Hawthorne's  style,  while  uncom- 
monly "central"  and  free  from  affectation,  was 
also,  as  his  note-books  show,  the  product  of  con- 
siderable practice  in  the  use  of  words.  Indeed,  it 
is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the  whole  interest 
of  his  note-books  lies  in  their  being  exercise  books 
for  his  gift  of  expression.  There  is  so  much  in 
them  of  unimportant  observation,  observation  so 
impersonal,  so  lacking  either  in  personal  or  general 
interest,  that  they  are  to  be  explained  on  no  other 
ground  than  that  of  a  man  using  his  pen  for  mere 
exercise  upon  anything  it  came  across,  however 
trivial. 

This  theory  of  the  note-books,  however,  may  be 
a   little   too   euphemistic,   too   generously   adapted 
to  cover  what  really  does  seem  to   have   been  a 
[282] 


RE-READING   HAWTHORNE 

certain  poverty  and  narrowness  in  Hawthorne's 
intellectual  interest, — a  certain  New  England  barren- 
ness of  the  soil.  His  was  certainly  not  a  rich  mind, 
exuberantly  creative.  On  the  contrary,  he  made 
use  of  his  inspiration  to  the  uttermost  farthing, 
and  the  manner  in  which  his  gift  died  before  him, 
of  premature  decay, — as  illustrated  by  his  pathetic 
realisation  of  his  inability  to  finish  The  Dolliver 
Romance  or  Septimius  Fellon, — seems  to  point 
to  a  constitutional  ansemia  in  his  nature.  When, 
after  repeated  attempts,  The  Dolliver  Romame 
fell  unfinished  from  his  hands,  he  wrote  thus  to  his 
publisher,  Mr.  Fields:  "I  hardly  know  what  to 
say  to  the  public  about  this  abortive  romance, 
though  I  know  pretty  well  what  the  case  will  be.  I 
shall  never  finish  it.  Yet  it  is  not  quite  pleasant  for 
an  author  to  announce  himself,  or  to  be  announced 
as  finally  broken  down  as  to  his  literary  faculty. 
...  I  cannot  finish  it  unless  a  great  change  comes 
over  me,  and,  if  I  make  too  great  an  effort  to  do 
so,  it  will  be  my  death;  not  that  I  should  care  much 
for  that,  if  I  could  fight  the  battle  through  and  win 
it,  thus  ending  a  life  of  much  smoulder  and  a  scanty 
fire  in  a  blaze  of  glory.  But  I  should  smother 
myself  in  mud  of  my  own  making.  .  .  ." 

The  decay  of  his  literary  gift  seemed  to  be  curi- 
ously  parallel  with  the   almost    incomprehensible 
fading  away  of  his  physical   life.     There  seemed 
[283] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

nothing  really  the  matter  with  him — only  a  sure 
sinking  of  the  fires  of  life.  It  was  as  if,  after  using 
up  the  *ron  of  his  New  England  blood  in  his  master- 
pieces, the  chill  of  it  was  all  that  was  left  in  his 
veins.  "Some  island  in  the  Gulf  Stream"  had  been 
one  of  his  suggestions,  as  the  chill  grew  chillier. 
In  warmer  latitudes,  perhaps,  the  fires  of  life  would 
have  revived — but  he  did  not  attempt  to  visit  them. 
He  went,  instead,  to  the  White  Mountains,  arriving 
at  Plymouth  on  May  i8th,  and  dying  the  following 
night.  He  lies  at  Concord,  perhaps  the  chief  of  the 
many  immortals  whose  memories  make  that  little 
town  what  one  might  call  the  Westminster  Abbey 
of  America. 


284] 


A    NOTE    ON    MAURICE 
HEWLETT 

(A  propos  "The  Stooping  Lady  ") 

IN  this  new  book  Mr.  Hewlett  carries  his 
strangely  brilHant  art  of  Hterary  impersona- 
tion to  the  highest  point  of  his  achievement. 
A  pecuHar  skill  seems  to  have  been  developed 
among  writers  during  the  last  twenty  years — 
that  of  writing  in  the  manner  of  some  master, 
not  merely  with  mimetic  cleverness,  but  with 
genuine  creative  power.  We  have  poets  who 
write  so  Uke  Wordsworth  and  Milton  that  one  can 
hardly  differentiate  them  from  their  masters;  and 
yet — for  this  is  my  point — they  are  no  mere  imitators, 
but  original  poets,  choosing,  it  would  seem,  some 
old  mask  of  immortahty  through  which  to  express 
themselves.  In  a  different  way  than  that  of  Guy 
de  Maupassant  they  have  chosen  to  suppress  them- 
selves, or  rather,  I  should  say,  that,  whereas  de 
Maupassant  strove  to  suppress,  to  eliminate  him- 
self, their  method  is  that  of  disguise.  In  some 
respects  they  remind  one  of  the  hermit  crab,  who 

[285] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

annexes  some  beautiful  ready-made  house  instead 
of  making  one  for  himself.  But  then  they  annex 
it  so  brilliantly,  with  such  delightful  consequences 
for  the  reader,  that  not  only  is  there  no  ground 
for  complaint,  but  the  reader  almost  forgets  that 
the  house  does  not  really  belong  to  them,  and 
that  they  are  merely  entertaining  tenants  on  a 
short  lease. 

Mr,  Maurice  Hewlett,  in  a  long  series  of  fascinat- 
ing books,  has  inhabited  many  styles.  We  are  all 
familiar  with  his  Malory-cum-Morris-cum-Meredith 
style.  In  The  Forest  Lovers  it  was  mainly  Mal- 
ory-cum-Morris,  in  Richard  Yea-and-Nay  it  was 
Meredith-cum-Medisevalism,  a  strange  hybrid  of 
style,  indeed,  through  which  to  express  so  powerfully 
personal  an  imagination.  Then,  of  course,  we 
have  the  Italianate  quattrocento  style  of  Earthwork 
Out  of  Tuscany  and  Little  Novels  of  Italy — 
more  nearly  personal  in  manner  than  any  of  his 
writings,  with  a  hint  of  Meredith,  however,  always 
in  the  air.  Now,  in  The  Stooping  Lady,  we  have 
Mr.  Hewlett  writing  sheer  Meredith,  naked  and 
unashamed — one  might  almost  say  rewriting  Diana 
of  the  Crossways.  And  yet  the  book  is  his  own, 
one  of  the  most  brilliant  pieces  of  work  done  in  our 
time,  with  a  heroine  I  personally  would  not  exchange 
for  Diana.  What  pictures,  what  character  drawing, 
what  atmosphere,  what  a  tense  story,  and,  again, 
[286] 


A  NOTE   ON   MAURICE  HEWLETT 

what  a  heroine,  and  yet  all  done  in  another  man's 
medium,  all  written  in  another  man's  words — no, 
hardly  that,  but  certainly  in  another  man's  style. 

In  anyone  concerned  with  the  manner  as  well  as 
the  matter  of  writing  this  odd  characteristic  or  gift 
of  Air.  Hewlett's  must  provoke  no  little  interest. 
Why  should  a  man  with  Mr.  Hewlett's  rare,  even 
astonishing,  endowment  of  personal  gifts  choose  to 
write,  not  impersonally — for  it  is  not  that — but  under, 
so  to  say,  the  aliases  of  so  many  other  personalities? 
This  protean  quality  makes  Mr.  Hewlett  somewhat 
of  a  contemporary  literary  phenomenon,  as  it  is 
surely  a  unique  form  of  literary  self-sacrifice.  If 
the  style  is  the  man,  one  is  obliged  to  ask  in  Mr. 
Hewlett's  case — Whose  style? 

I  do  not  propose  to  retell  a  story  which  Mr.  Hew- 
lett has  told  so  well;  but  these  opening  sentences 
will  at  once  state  the  "argument"  and  afford  a  good 
illustration  of  the  Meredithism  of  Mr.  Hewlett's 
manner : 

On  the  2 1  St  of  January,  1809,  Miss  Hermia  Mary 
Chambre  and  her  brother.  Ensign  Richard — as  the 
Countess  of  Morfa's  chariot  brought  them  for  the 
first  time  to  Caryll  House,  St.  James's,  within  those 
great  gates,  into  that  gravelled  court  where  the  statue 
of  a  late  Earl  stood  and  admonished  London — on 
this  day,  and  on  the  very  threshold  of  this  Sanctuary 
of  the  Constitution,  Miss  Chambre,  I  say,  and  her 
brother,  a  beautiful  and  healthy  girl  of  twenty  and 
[287] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

a  fine  young  man  of  rather  less,  were  witnesses  to 
a  disagreeable  incident,  a  vulgar  brawl  and  scuffle, 
calling  for  the  interference  of  the  police. 

Orphans,  Irish  by  a  deplorable  father's  side,  and 
therefore  in  crying  need  of  grace,  this  was  the  grace 
they  got.  Recalled  within  the  pale  of  Family — 
that  Family  which  their  poor  mother  had  forsworn 
• — they  were  to  see  Family  put  to  the  blush.  A 
rout  of  satyrs,  a  boors'  comedy,  in  which  an  incensed 
young  giant  of  the  lower  classes  was  hero  and  two 
tipsy  gentlemen  the  sport  of  his  heroics;  in  which 
Jacob  Jacobs,  elderly,  gold-laced  guardian  of  the 
gates,  was  choragus;  in  which  footmen  in  canary 
yellow  and  powder,  a  groom  of  the  chambers,  a 
butler  hovering  for  the  carriage,  took  their  cues  from 
him,  and  wailed,  lifted  their  eyes  to  Heaven,  wagged 
their  polls,  called  for  constables,  as  he  guided  them 
with  agitated  hands — what  a  welcome  to  Britain! 
Beyond  them  and  around  them — with  a  ring 
scrupulously  kept  for  the  "turn-up" — surged  and 
thundered  the  mob,  intent  only  on  the  play,  with 
raucous  cries  directed  solely  to  that,  with  eyes  afire 
for  the  rules  of  the  great  game.  "Time!  Time!" 
"Let  my  lord  get  his  wind — Now  they're  at  it — 
a  mill,  a  mill! — ding-dong!  "  "What,  you'll  rush 
it,  my  lord?  By  God,  that's  stopped  him!  "  "Six 
to  one  on  the  butcher — I  lay."  "Keep  the  ring, 
gentlemen,  please — fobbed  him  fairly — gone  to 
grass!  "  It  was  indeed  at  this  crowning  moment, 
when  one  gentleman  lay  bleeding  on  his  back,  and 
the  other,  slighter  gentleman,  "spitfiring  like  a 
tomcat,"  it  was  afterward  averred,  struggled  fruit- 
lessly to  escape  the  enemy's  grasp  of  his  coat-collar 
[288] 


A  NOTE  ON  MAURICE  HEWLETT 

— that  the  family  chariot  of  the  Morfas  loomed 
heavily  at  the  far  end  of  Cleveland  Row^  and, 
advancing,  displayed  to  the  eyes  of  our  young  lady 
and  her  brother  one  of  the  sights  of  London — as 
they  no  doubt  supposed  it.  Hardly  seeing  what, 
certainly,  was  not  fit  to  be  seen,  no  doubt  for  a 
second  of  time  those  startled  eyes  of  hers  gazed  upon 
the  havoc,  and  upon  the  flushed  young  Saxon, 
bareheaded  and  fair-headed,  the  hero  of  it — a  notice- 
able young  man  performing  noticeable  feats  with 
gentlemen.  No  doubt  but  that  she,  too,  was  by 
him  gazed  upon  in  her  turn,  and  that  that  second 
of  time  seemed  by  seconds  too  long.  These 
encounters  of  the  eyes  stay  by  one,  though  in  this 
case  there  were  sights  to  come.  Within  the  gates 
lay  another — a  dead  horse,  weltering  from  the  issue 
of  a  terrible  wound;  whereat  indeed  the  bright-eyed 
Miss  Chambre  shrieked  and  clung  to  her  brother, 
and  he,  after  one  sagacious  look,  said,  ''Staked, 
Hermy,"  and  then,  "Poor  devil.  So  that  was  the 
meaning  of  it." 

And  thus  1809,  thus  London,  thus  England  and 
Caryll  House  arrayed  themselves  to  greet  two  young 
Carylls  (by  the  mother's  side)  very  newly  from 
Ireland.  A  mob  at  the  Gates!  A  dead  and  man- 
gled horse  within  the  Precincts!  A  tipsy  gentleman 
scruffed  by  a  butcher's  man!  The  scene  was  sig- 
nificant.    As  the  French  would  say — 1809! 

The  story  is  told  throughout  in  this  manner — a 

delightful  story,  an  enthralling  heroine.  No  Mere- 

dithian  device  is  forgotten.     We  have  Pink  Mor- 
19                              [289] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

daunt,  with  his  anecdotes:  "Pink  Mordaunt  he  is 
in  all  the  Memoirs."  It  was  an  age  of  diaries  and 
diarists,  as  the  first  chapter  of  Diana  of  tJw  Cross- 
ways  reminds  us.  We  have  Mr.  Meredith's  in- 
evitable great  newspaper  man,  an  inky,  undertakerly, 
obsequious  person,  editing  his  paper  in  the  interests 
of  the  Government,  and  therefore  flatteringly  toler- 
ated in  great  houses;  we  have  delightful  Meredithian 
names,  such  as  Lord  Rodono,  Mervyn  Touchett, 
Gell-Gell,  Lord  Drillstone — Mr.  Hewlett  even  ven- 
tures to  lay  hands  on  the  name  of  "Carinthia" 
for  one  of  his  ladies;  and  we  have  in  the  Hon. 
Captain  Ranald  the  inevitable  Meredithian  "Red- 
worth,"  the  quiet  man  who  waits  till  the  heroine  has 
got  over — the  hero. 

The  hero,  of  course,  is  the  young  flaxen-haired 
Saxon,  David  Vernour,  butcher — and,  as  it  soon 
transpires,  reform  orator  and  politician.  Captain 
Ranald  and  other  reform  gentlemen  of  the  time 
are  friends  of  his,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  was 
a  fine  fellow,  a  "nature's  gentleman,"  very  liable 
to  catch  the  eye  and  heart  of  a  rebellious  young 
noble  lady,  whose  father  had  been  an  Irish  soldier 
eloquently  "Marseillaise,"  and  whose  mother,  run- 
ning away  from  the  same  embattled,  escutcheoned 
home  in  which  her  daughter  was  to  repeat  the  history 
of  revolt,  had  rejoiced  to  be  called  "citoyenne." 
For  the  days  were  the  days  of  the  Revolution,  the 
[290] 


A  NOTE   ON  MAURICE   HEWLETT 

Rights  of  Man,  the  days  of  Tom  Paine  and  William 
Cobbett.  Of  the  latter,  by  the  way,  Mr.  Hewlett 
gives  a  smart  but  unnecessarily  snobbish  sketch. 
Mr.  Hewlett  is  very  evidently  on  the  side  of  what  his 
great  old  Dowager  Lady  Morfa  called  "Family"; 
but  at  the  same  time  he  manages  his  butcher  with 
no  little  sympathy  and  amazing  tact.  Certainly 
one  cannot  conceive  for  a  novelist  a  love  theme  re- 
quiring more  delicate  handling,  and  Mr.  Hewlett's 
treatment  of  it  from  beginning  to  end  is  masterly. 
The  closing  scene  at  Charing  Cross,  where  Vernour 
stands  in  the  pillory  for  having  made  an  incendiary 
speech  at  a  reform  meeting,  and  Lady  Hermia, 
his  betrothed,  stands  at  his  side  face  to  face 
with  a  surging  mob,  is  not  only  full  of  noble 
pathos,  but  is  a  denouement  of  the  most  skilful 
appropriateness;  and  the  picture  Mr.  Hewlett  draws 
of  the  whole  scene,  bringing  before  us,  as  it  does, 
the  England  of  that  day  in  a  few  vivid  strokes,  is  a 
masterpiece  of  the  historic  imagination. 


(291 J 


VI 

A  NOTE  ON  STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

FOR  those  who  value  the  permanent  elements 
in  literature  the  enthusiastic  welcome  given 
to  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips's  poems  and  dramas 
is  a  great  and  much  needed  consolation  at  the  pres- 
ent time.  There  is  still,  it  would  appear,  an  audience 
for  a  literature  which  is  not  all  blood  and  drums, 
the  literature  of  humanity  as  opposed  to  the  truculent 
journalistic  literature  of  inhumanity  so  fashionable 
during  the  last  five  years — a  literature  of  beauty  and 
imagmation,  of  high  meditation,  of  pity,  of  dignity. 

Return,  Alphsus,  the  dread  voice  is  past 
That  shrunk  thy  streams  .  .  . 

Mr.  Phillips's  success  does  not,  indeed,  provide 
the  only  sign  of  the  return  of  a  more  clement  literary 
regime.  There  are  one  or  two  poets,  novelists,  and 
essayists,  whose  continued  appreciation  by  a  consid- 
erable public  during  the  dark  period  I  have  referred 
to  shows  that  there  are  some  still  left  among  us  who 
care  to  keep  burning  the  lamps  of  humanistic  art. 
But  Mr.  Phillips's  success  is  the  most  significant, 
because  of  all  of  them  he  has  done  his  work  on  the 
[292] 


A  NOTE   ON   STEPHEN   PHILLIPS 

most  severe  and  classical  lines,  with  least  concession 
to  the  fashions  of  contemporary  pleasing. 

To  write  tragedies,  visions,  and  idyls  in  blank 
verse,  and  to  draw  grim  pictures  of  the  modern  world 
in  the  heroic  couplet  seemed  the  last  way  to  catch 
the  fevered  ear  of  the  moment.  But,  of  course,  time 
is  always  bringing  in  its  revenges,  and  the  longer 
a  form  of  art  has  been  out  of  fashion,  the  sooner  is 
it  likely  to  come  into  fashion  again.  Still,  the  resus- 
citation of  the  poetic  drama  with  so  much  welcome 
and  eclat  was  a  surprise  we  had  hardly  dared  to  hope 
for,  at  least  in  England,  where  the  drama  has  for 
long  been  at  so  low  a  point  of  vitality  and  taste, 
in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  certain  dramatic  critics 
to  breathe  into  it  the  breath  of  a  finer  life,  and  in 
spite  of  imported  examples  of  noble  and  beautiful 
work  from  the  Continent.  However,  the  public 
that  paid  so  little  heed  to  Ibsen  and  Maeterlinck 
and  Hauptmann  have,  apparently,  given  a  warm 
welcome  to  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips;  and  for  the  first 
time  in  many  years  an  original  play  in  l)lank  verse 
has  taken  the  town.  Here,  indeed,  is  cause  for 
rejoicing!  And  not  only  has  Mr.  Phillips  achieved 
this  success  on  the  stage,  but,  before  Herod  had  been 
produced,  he  had  already  achieved  the  almost 
equally  difficult  success  of  selling  his  poetic  play 
Paolo  and  Francesca  in  its  book  form  hardly  less 
rapidly  than  if  it  were  a  popular  novel. 
[293] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

All  which  is  matter  not  only  for  Mr.  Phillips's 
private  congratulation,  but  for  public  rejoicing. 
Seldom  has  an  Anglo-Saxon  public  done  itself  so 
much  credit,  so  spontaneously  acclaimed  the  good 
thing  when  they  found  it — or  rather  when  they  were 
shown  it.  For  here,  too,  those  much-abused  people, 
the  critics,  deserve  no  small  share  in  this  general 
congratulation.  With  the  exception  of  Mr.  Kip- 
ling, I  remember  no  young  poet  of  our  time  who  has 
been  received  with  such  a  consensus  of  acceptance 
and  encouragement  by  the  most  authoritative  critics. 
So  unanimous  was  this  that  the  old  cry  of  "log- 
rolling" was,  of  course,  raised.  No  one  need  pay 
heed  to  that  cry,  except  where  bad  or  mediocre 
work  is  manifestly  being  over-praised.  When  the 
really  good  thing  has  been  found,  the  more  voices 
that  acclaim  it  the  better,  even  though,  indeed, 
there  should  be  a  conspiracy  of  praise.  Why  not? 
Conspiracies  of  blame  are  not  unknown. 

So  far  as  one  can  judge  from  his  published  poetry, 
Mr.  Phillips's  development  has  been  as  sudden  as  his 
fame,  though  of  that,  of  course,  mere  dates  of  publi- 
cation give  no  reliable  guidance.  The  work  of  his 
which  had  got  into  print  previous  to  his  little  Christ 
in  Hades  booklet  of  1896  gives  but  little,  if  any,  indi- 
cation of  the  gift  which  was  to  burst  out  into  sudden 
flame — and  fame — with  that  particular  issue  of  Mr. 
Elkin  Mathews's  dainty  little  Shilling  Garland. 
[2943 


A  NOTE   ON   STEPHEN   PHILLIPS 

The  year  1888  was  a  period  when  ballads  and 
rondeaux  were  still  popular,  when  little,  sweet- 
smelling  nosegays  of  verse,  quaintly  printed  and 
"gotten  up,"  were  much  in  demand  by  the  literary 
connoisseur;  and,  among  these,  a  small  volume  enti- 
tled Primavera,  published  at  Oxford  in  that  year 
by  four  friends,  won  quite  a  distinction  for  itself. 
The  names  of  the  friends  were  Stephen  Phillips, 
Laurence  Binyon,  Manmohan  Ghose,  and  Arthur 
S.  Cripps.  Looking  through  the  volume  to-day, 
there  seems  nothing  especially  remarkable  about  it, 
nothing  of  those  thrilling  preludes  by  which  the 
poet,  like  the  immortal  gods, 

gives  sign 
With  hushing  finger,  how  he  means  to  load 
His  tongue  with  the  full  weight  of  utterlcss  thought. 

The  breath  of  the  volume  is  rather  autumnal  than 
vernal,  but  that  is,  of  course,  a  mark  of  youthful 
verse;  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  give  anyone 
of  the  four  friends  pre-eminence  over  the  others. 
The  friends  themselves,  however,  seem  to  have 
shown  some  indication  of  their  view  by  placing 
Mr.  Phillips  in  the  forefront  of  the  little  volume, 
with  a  prelude  which  in  its  mood  reminds  one  of 
how  Keats  prefaced  his  first  poems  with  a  sigh  for 
"glory  and  loveliness"  passed  away  for  ever  from 
the   earth,    just    at    the    moment    when    loveliness 

[295] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE     REVIEWS 

was  about  to  reawaken  so  divinely  to  his  sing- 
ing. The  reader  will,  no  doubt,  care  to  judge 
for  himself  of  Mr.  Phillips's  youthful  farewell  to 
a  Muse  that  was  so  soon,  so  to  say,  to  throw 
herself  into  his  arms. 

No  Muse  will  I  invoke:  for  she  is  fled! 

Lo!  where  she  sits  breathing,  yet  all  but  dead. 

She  loved  the  heavens  of  old,  she  thought  them  fair; 

And  dream'd  of  gods  in  Tempe's  golden  air. 

For  her  the  wind  had  voice,  the  sea  its  cry; 

She  deem'd  heroic  Greece  could  never  die. 

Breathless  was  she,  to  think  what  nymphs  might  play 

In  clear  green  depths,  deep-shaded  from  the  day; 

She  thought  the  dim  and  inarticulate  god 

Was  beautiful,  nor  knew  she  man  a  sod; 

But  hoped  what  seem'd  might  not  be  all  untrue, 

And  feared  to  look  beyond  the  eternal  blue. 

But  now  the  heavens  are  bared  of  dreams  divine. 

Still  murmurs  she,  like  Autumn,  This  is  mine! 

How  should  she  face  the  ghastly,  jarring  Truth, 

That  questions  all,  and  tramples  without  ruth? 

And  still  she  clings  to  Ida  of  her  dreams. 

And  sobs,  Ah,  let  the  world  he  what  it  seems  ! 

Then  the  shy  nymph  shall  softly  come  again; 

The  world,  once  more,  make  music  for  her  pain. 

For,  sitting  in  the  dim  and  ghostly  night, 

She  fain  would  stay  the  strong  approach  of  light; 

While  later  bards  cleave  to  her,  and  believe 

That  in  her  sorrow  she  can  still  conceive  ! 

Oh,  let  her  dream ;  still  lovely  is  her  sigh ; 

Oh,  rouse  her  not,  or  she  shall  surely  die. 

[296] 


A  NOTE   ON   STEPHEN   PHILLIPS 

Though  there  is  nothing  remarkable  here,  lovers 
of  Mr.  Phillips's  mature  poetry  will  note  two  points 
about  the  poem  which,  though  one  could  not  realise 
it  in  1888,  were  prophetic  of  certain  characteristics 
since  well  marked  in  his  verse.  One  point  is  the 
employment  of  the  heroic  couplet,  then,  as  still, 
the  least-used  measure  of  the  day,  and  its  employ- 
ment, too,  with  the  curt  rhyme  endings,  after  the 
eighteenth-century  manner,  not  as  Marlowe  used 
it,  with  run-over  endings,  technically  called  en- 
jamhements,  or  as  Mr.  Swinburne  has  similarly 
used  it  with  such  splendour  in  Tristram  of  Lyonesse. 
So,  nearly  ten  years  later,  Mr.  Phillips  was  still  to 
use  it,  though,  of  course,  with  incomparable  increase 
of  poetic  power. 

The  other  point  is  the  peculiar,  indefinable 
poignancy  of  these  two  lines: 

For,  sitting  in  the  dim  and  ghostly  night, 

She  fain  would  stay  the  strong  approach  of  light; 

hinting  already  at  that  sense  of  the  spectral  beauty 
of  the  world  which  is  so  marked  in  all  Mr.  Phillips's 
subsequent  poetry. 

Mr.  Phillips's  three  other  contributions  to  Prima- 
vera  also  seem  each  prophetic  now  of  a  subse- 
quent fulfilment.  Particularly  so  is  the  blank-verse 
dramatic  vignette  of    "Orestes,"    with    its   austere 

[297] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

movement  and  its  hints  of  dramatic  vision.     Here  is 
the  opening  passage,  which  is  all  I  have  space  for: 

Me  in  far  lands  did  Justice  call,  cold  queen 

Among  the  dead,  who  after  heat  and  haste 

At  length  have  leisure  for  her  steadfast  voice. 

That  gathers  peace  from  the  great  deeps  of  hell. 

She  call'd  me,  saying:    "I  heard  a  cry  by  night! 

Go  thou,  and  question  not;  within  thy  halls 

Thy  will  awaits  fulfilment.     Lo,  the  dead 

Cries  out  before  me  in  the  under-world. 

Seek  not  to  justify  thyself'   in  me 

Be  strong,  and  I  will  show  thee  wise  in  time; 

For,  though  my  face  be  dark,  yet  unto  those 

Who  truly  follow  me  through  storm  or  shine, 

For  these  the  veil  shall  fall,  and  they  shall  see 

They  walked  with  Wisdom,  though  they  knew  her  not." 

So  sped  I  home;  and  from  the  under-world 

Forever  came  a  wind  that  fill'd  my  sails, 

Cold,  like  a  spirit!  and  ever  her  still  voice 

Spoke  over  shoreless  seas  and  fathomless  deeps, 

And  in  great  calms,  as  from  a  colder  world: 

Nor  slack'd  I  sail  by  day,  nor  yet  when  night 

Fell  on  my  running  keel,  and  now  would  burn, 

With  all  her  eyes,  my  errand  into  me. 

Of  the  two  lyrics  which  complete  Mr.  Phillips's 
contributions  to  Primavera,  one,  "A  Dream,"  he 
has  retained  and  expanded  to  good  purpose,  under 
the  title  of  "  The  Apparition,"  in  his  Poems. 

But  this  other,  "To  a  Lost  Love,"  I  am  tempted 
to  quote  entire,  not  because,  indeed,  I  consider  it 
[2983 


A  NOTE   ON   STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

a  perfect  poem,  though  its  beauty  and  tender- 
ness are  apparent,  but  because  of  the  contrast 
of  its  conventional  lyrical  method  with  the  freer 
and  more  personal  method  of  two  or  three  later 
lyrics,  which,  in  the  general  admiration  for  Mr. 
Phillips's  blank  verse,  have,  perhaps,  been  some- 
what overlooked. 

I  cannot  look  upon  thy  grave, 

Though  there  the  rose  is  sweet; 
Better  to  hear  the  long  wave  wash 

These  wastes  about  my  feet! 

Shall  I  take  comfort?     Dost  thou  live 

A  spirit  though  afar, 
With  a  deep  hush  about  thee,  like 

The  stillness  round  a  star? 

Oh,  thou  art  cold!     In  that  high  sphere 

Thou  art  a  thing  apart. 
Losing  in  saner  happiness 

This  madness  of  the  heart. 

And  yet,  at  times,  thou  still  shalt  feel 

A  passing  breath,  a  pain; 
Disturb'd,  as  though  a  door  in  heaven 

Had  oped  and  closed  again. 

And  thou  shalt  shiver,  while  the  hymns, 
The  solemn  hymns,  shall  cease; 

A  moment  half  remember  me: 
Then  turn  away  to  peace. 

[299] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE    REVIEWS 

But  oh,  for  evermore  thy  look, 
Thy  laugh,  thy  charm,  thy  tone, 

Thy  sweet  and  wayward  earthliness, 
Dear  trivial  things,  are  gone ! 

Therefore  I  look  not  on  thy  grave, 
Though  there  the  rose  is  sweet; 

But  rather  hear  the  loud  wave  wash 
Those  wastes  about  my  feet. 

I  am  sorry  to  be  unable  to  illustrate  Mr.  Phillips's 
development  from  his  next,  and  first  independent, 
appearance  as  a  poet.  This  was  in  1894,  w^hen  he 
privately  printed  the  now  rare  philosophical  poem 
"Eremus,"  My  copy  of  "Eremus"  is  in  England, 
and  I  have  been  unable  to  procure  a  copy  in  America 
in  time  for  this  article.  However,  the  poem,  though 
containing  fine  passages  of  meditation  and  strokes 
of  beauty,  is  interesting  mainly  as  showing  Mr. 
Phillips's  growing  seriousness  in  his  art  and  his 
strenuous  study  of  blank  verse,  to  which,  however, 
he  was  as  yet  unable  to  give  his  own  later  very 
individual  stamp.  That  stamp,  however,  in  all 
its  mature  individuality,  was  unmistakably  upon  his 
next  volume,  published  only  two  years  later,  the  little 
Christ  in  Hades  booklet,  to  which  I  have  already 
made  reference.  Only  two  years,  I  say;  because 
the  almost  miraculous  metamorphosis  of  Keats 
from  a  doggerel  writer  in  ladies'  albums  to  the 
[300] 


A  NOTE   ON   STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

supreme  poet  of  beauty  is  hardly  more  striking  than 
the  sudden  leap  into  maturity  made  by  Mr.  Phillips 
in  these  two  years.  There  could  be  no  question 
of  mere  "promise"  about  Christ  in  Hades.  In  its 
thrilling  beauty  and  its  clairvoyant  dramatic  vision 
it  impressed  one  immediately  as  an  indisputable 
masterpiece.  Mr.  Phillips  has  done  different  things 
equally  finely,  but  he  has  never  surpassed  it.  It 
is  too  well  known  to-day  for  there  to  be  any  need 
to  quote  from  it;  but,  recalling  what  I  said  above 
as  to  Mr.  Phillips's  lyrics,  I  should  like  to  recall 
this  dramatic  lyric  of  singular  insight  and  poignancy 
— a  lyric  which  alone  could  leave  no  doubt  as  to 
Mr.  Phillips  being  a  born  dramatist  as  well  as  poet : 

I  in  the  greyness  rose; 

I  could  not  sleep  for  thinking  of  one  dead. 
Then  to  the  chest  I  went, 

Where  lie  the  things  of  my  beloved  spread. 

Quietly  these  I  took; 

A  little  glove,  a  sheet  of  music  torn, 
Paintings,  ill-done,  perhaps; 

Then  lifted  up  a  dress  that  she  had  worn. 

And  now  I  came  to  where 

Her  letters  are;  they  lie  beneath  the  rest; 
And  read  them  in  the  haze; 

She  spoke  of  many  things,  was  sore  opprest. 

[301  ] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

But  these  things  moved  me  not; 

Not  when  she  spoke  of  being  parted  quite, 
Or  being  misunderstood, 

Or  growing  weary  of  the  world's  great  fight. 

Not  even  when  she  wrote 

Of  our  dead  child,  and  the  handwriting  swerved; 
Not  even  then  I  shook: 

Not  even  by  such  words  was  I  unnerved. 

I  thought,  she  is  at  peace; 

Whither  the  child  is  gone,  she,  too,  has  passed. 
And  a  much-needed  rest 

Is  fallen  upon  her,  she  is  still  at  last. 

But  when  at  length  I  took 

From  under  all  those  letters  one  small  sheet. 
Folded  and  writ  in  haste; 

Why  did  my  heart  with  sudden  sharpness  beat? 

Alas,  it  was  not  sad  ! 

Her  saddest  words  I  had  read  calmly  o'er. 
Alas,  it  had  no  pain! 

Her  painful  words,  all  these  I  knew  before. 

A  hurried,  happy  line  ! 

A  little  jest,  too  slight  for  one  so  dead: 
This  did  I  not  endure: 

Then  with  a  shuddering  heart  no  more  I  read. 

Only  a  year  later  (1897)  Mr.  Phillips,  in  reprinting 
Christ  in  Hades  and  the  poems  accompanying  it  in 
[302] 


A   NOTE   ON   STEPHEN    PHILLIPS 

a  new  volume  of  Poems,  published  by  Mr.'  John 
Lane,  was  able  to  add  to  them  several  new  poems  of 
importance,  three  of  them,  at  least,  showing  striking 
new  developments  in  his  poetic  gift — developments 
remarkably  diverse.  On  the  one  hand,  we  had 
"Marpessa,"  perhaps  the  most  supremely  beautiful 
treatment  of  a  "classical"  subject  since  Keats, 
and  certainly  the  loveliest  love-poem  of  our  time; 
and,  on  the  other,  we  had  "The  Woman  with  the 
Dead  Soul"  and  "The  Wife,"  tragic  studies  in 
modern  realism,  which,  however,  the  noble  pity 
pervading  them  entirely  lifted  above  other  realistic 
experiments  of  a  similar  kind  in  recent  verse  or 
prose.  You  have  but  to  compare  Mr.  Henley's 
sonnets  on  London  types  with  Mr.  PhilHps's  London 
poems  to  see  how  this  quality  of  humanity  makes 
the  younger  man's  work  so  much  more  valuable 
than  the  other's.  Each  alike  has  a  great  gift  for 
vividly  catching  a  likeness,  in  a  line  or  two;  but 
the  one  seems  to  etch  in  vitriol  with  a  cruel 
delight  in  the  sordidness  and  deformity  of  his 
subjects,  and  the  other,  though  even  more  forcibly 
and  more  truly  realistically,  in  tears.  A  greater 
contrast  than  "The  Wife"  and  "Marpessa"  could 
hardly  be  found  in  any  young  poet's  work,  and 
the  contrast  augurs  well  for  the  breadth  of  Mr. 
Phillips's  powers — the  variety  of  the  subject-matter 
he   is  capable  of  handling.     Mr.   Phillips,  almost 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

alone  among  our  younger  poets,  seems  to  possess 
the  capacity,  to  use  a  colloquial  phrase,  of  "break- 
ing out  into  a  fresh  place."  Two  years  later,  again, 
he  was  to  illustrate  this  capacity  in  his  beautiful 
tragedy  of  Paolo  and  Francesca,  and  now  he  has 
made  a  further  advance  with  Herod.  That  he 
has  many  more  surprises  of  power  in  store  for  us 
who  that  has  followed  his  work  can  doubt?  I 
should  not  be  surprised  if  his  development  took  the 
direction  of  perfecting  his  lyric  gift,  or  led  him  once 
more  to  the  contemplation  of  the  Inferno  of  London, 
which  has  long  haunted  his  imagination.  He  him- 
self, in  an  essay  published  a  year  or  two  ago,  de- 
clared his  interest  in  the  unseen  spiritual  world  as 
a  theme  for  poetic  treatment,  and  the  strangely 
visionary  nature  of  his  imagination  would  make 
any  experiments  of  his  in  that  direction  matters  of 
peculiar  expectancy. 

Returning  to  that  work  of  his  which  is  at  present 
interesting  the  public,  some  critics,  I  notice,  while 
admirers  of  his  poetry,  have  expressed  surprise  at 
his  dramatic  success.  The  surprise  is  that  anyone 
can  have  read  his  poetry  without  feeling  that  its 
very  essence  is  dramatic  insight.  Beautiful  as  his 
lines  are,  they  are  always  muscular  with  reality. 
Christ  in  Hades  was  packed  with  the  dramatic 
imagination  from  end  to  end.  Its  chief  beauty  was 
that  of  dramatic  truth.     Perhaps,  as  I  have  else- 

[304] 


A  NOTE   ON   STEPHEN   PHILLIPS 

where  said,  it  is  rather  the  truth  than  the  beauty  of 
his  poetry  that  first  arrests  one,  or  should  one  say 
that  most  of  the  beauty  of  his  poetry  comes  of  its 
truth,  which  is  another  way  of  saying  that  it  is  very 
real  poetry  indeed?  At  all  events,  I  remember  to 
have  read  nothing  of  Mr.  Phillips's  that  was  not 
essentially  dramatic.  That  he  should  succeed  in 
formal  drama  is  to  me,  therefore,  a  secondary  con- 
sideration; but  that  he  has  succeeded  there  can  be 
no  question,  particularly  in  Herod.  Perhaps,  on 
the  whole,  the  last  act  of  Herod  is  the  finest  thing 
he  has  done.  The  first  two  acts  seem  to  me  to 
carry  dramatic  brevity  of  expression  almost  to 
baldness,  and  dramatic  construction  almost  to  the 
point  of  a  diagram  in  dramatic  anatomy — a  well- 
knit  skeleton  of  a  drama  rather  than  a  drama. 
For,  while  it  is  true  that  in  most  poetic  dramas  the 
characters  speak  too  much,  it  may  be  urged  that  it 
is  possible  for  them  to  speak  too  little.  And  it  must 
always  be  remembered  in  criticising  poetic  drama — 
as,  indeed,  any  form  of  drama — that  it  is  a  conven- 
tion— a  convention  that  only  within  certain  limits 
recognises  so-called  "realistic"  action  and  speech, 
or  even  that  bugbear  of  the  young  dramatist,  "  stage 
exigency." 

In  the  third  act  of  Herod,  however,  the  dramatic 
skeleton  is  unmistakably  clothed  in  flesh  and  blood, 
uttering   wonderful   human   speech.     It   would   be 

20  [  305  ] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

difJEicult,  I  think,  to  find  an  act  in  any  English  poetic 
play  since  the  Elizabethans  in  which  at  once  the 
dramatic  interest  is  so  keen  and  so  subtly  developed, 
and  the  quality  of  the  poetry  so  fine.  The  wonder- 
ful way  in  which  the  mad  king's  longing  for  his 
dead  wife — whom  he  more  than  half  believes  dead, 
and  dares  not  quite  half  believe  alive — is  made  to 
grow  from  moment  to  moment,  while  his  courtiers 
seek  to  distract  him  into  his  various  ambitious 
plans  for  the  good  of  his  people,  such  as  the  building 
of  the  great  Temple  and  the  port  at  Caesarea,  can 
only  be  illustrated  by  quotation. 

Herod.  Pour  out  those  pearls, 

And  give  me  in  my  hand  that  bar  of  gold. 
I  heard  an  angel  crying  from  the  Sun, 
For  glory,  for  more  glory  on  the  earth; 
And  here  I'll  build  the  wonder  of  the  world. 
I   have   conceived   a  Temple   that   shall   stand 
Up  in  such  splendour  that  men  bright  from  it 
Shall   pass  with  a  light  glance  the  pyramids. 
I'll  have— 

Re-enter  Attendant. 
Ah!  come  you  from  the  queen?     Fear  not.     She 
is  asleep? 

Gadias   {to  whom  Attendant  has  whispered). 

She  is  fallen  in  a  deep  sleep. 
Herod.     Ah,  rouse  her  not. 
{To    Attendant.)     You    did    not    touch    her? 
No? 

[3063 


A  NOTE   ON   STEPHEN   PHILLIPS 

You  did  not  speak  o'er  loud?     She  did  not  stir 
then? 

Attend.     O  king!  she  stirred  not  once. 

Herod.  Such   sleep   is   good. 

But  there  was  still  the  moving  of  the  breast? 

Attend.     O  king — 

Herod  (hastily).     Yes — yes — I  understand — I — 

Priest.  Sir, 

Each  moment  wasted  from  this  huge  emprise 
The  Temple — 

Herod  (to  Attendant),    Hither,  quietly  in  my 
ear. 
I  say — you  saw — her  bosom  stirred? 

Attend.  I  saw — 

Herod.     You  saw!    It  is  enough! 

(To  Court.)  Bear  with  me — Oh! 

I  dreamed  last  night  of  a  dome  of  beaten  gold 
To  be  a  counter-glory  to  the  Sun. 
There  shall  the  eagle  bUndly  dash  himself, 
There  the  first  beam  shall  strike,  and  there  the  moon 
Shall  aim  all  night  her  argent  archery; 
And  it  shall  be  the  tryst  of  sundered  stars. 
The  haunt  of  dead  and  dreaming  Solomon; 
Shall  send  a  light  upon  the  lost  in  Hell, 
And  flashings  ujjon  faces  without  hope — 
And  I  will  think  in  gold  and  dream  in  silver. 
Imagine  in  marble  and  in  bronze  conceive. 
Till  it  shall  dazzle  pilgrim  nations 
And  stammering  tribes  from  undiscovered  lands, 
Allure  the  li\ing  God  out  of  the  bliss, 
And  all  the  streaming  seraphim  from  heaven. 

(Herod  looks  at  door  and  sits.) 
That  bag  of  emeralds,  give  it  to  me — so: 

[  ,307  ] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

And  yonder  sack  of  rubies;  I  will  gaze 
On  glittering  things. 

{Sits  listlessly,  hands  down.) 

Let  one  of  you  go  forth 
And  rouse  the  queen — not  roughly  be  it  done — 
But  rouse  her!     I  would  have  her  waked  from  sleep. 

Even  this  lengthy  quotation  but  poorly  illustrates 
the  masterly  dramatic  modulation  of  the  scene  and 
the  exquisite  tenderness  of  it.  Of  its  sumptuous 
language,  however,  it  gives  a  juster  idea.  It  is  no 
flattery  of  Mr.  Phillips  to  say  that  Marlowe  might 
have  signed  it  with  pride.  Mr.  Phillips  has  often 
been  called  "  Miltonic."  It  is  new  to  find  him  using 
Marlowe's  drums  and  trumpets  of  barbaric  pomp 
so  grandly.  But,  as  I  have  said,  this  is  far  from 
being  his  last  surprise  to  us. 

Meanwhile,  all  true  lovers  of  literature  will 
salute  him  with  gratitude  and  pride  and  wish  him 
all  the  laurels  his  head  can  carry. 


[308] 


VII 

A  VIVISECTIONIST    OF    LITERA- 
TURE 

MR.  ARTHUR  SYMONS,  writing  very  in- 
geniously of  Coleridge,  in  tliis  remark- 
able, almost  uncanny  book  of  criticism,* 
is  very  severe  on  Coleridge's  weakness  for  disciples. 
"It  may  be,"  he  says,  "that  we  have  had  no  more 
wonderful  talker,  and,  no  doubt,  the  talk  had  its 
reverential  Hsteners,  its  disciples;  but  to  cultivate 
or  permit  disciples  is  itself  a  kind  of  waste,  a  kind 
of  weakness." 

Yet,  if  certain  other  masters  had  been  stronger 
than  Coleridge,  and  denied  the  disciple!  Walter 
Pater,  for  example.  In  that  case  we  should  surely 
have  lost  these  essays,  lost,  indeed,  Mr.  Symons 
altogether.  For,  if  ever  there  was  a  disciple,  carry- 
ing out  the  mandate  of  his  master  to  the  last  minutiae 
of  instruction,  that  disciple  is  Mr.  Symons. 

The  best  criticism  or  appreciation  of  this  brilliant 
book  would  be  to  reprint  the  famous  preface  to 
Pater's  "The  Renaissance";  but  a  sentence  from  it 

*  The  Romantic  Movement  in  English  Poetry,  by  Arthur 
Symons,  1909. 

I  309] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

will  suffice  to  show  with  what  devotion  and  skill  Mr. 
Symons  has  applied  the  formula  of  his  master: 

"The  function  of  the  aesthetic  critic,"  writes 
Pater,  "  is  to  distinguish,  analyse,  and  separate  from 
its  adjuncts  the  virtue  by  which  a  picture,  a  land- 
scape, a  fair  personality  in  life  or  in  a  book  produces 
its  special  impression  of  beauty  or  pleasure,  to 
indicate  what  the  source  of  that  impression  is,  and 
under  what  conditions  it  is  experienced.  His  end 
is  reached  when  he  has  disengaged  that  virtue  and 
noted  it,  as  a  chemist  notes  some  natural  element, 
for  himself  and  others." 

Indeed,  Mr.  Symons  has  applied  the  formula  of  his 
master,  as  his  master  was  incapable  of  applying  it — ■ 
applied  it  with  a  narrow  thoroughness  which  was 
impossible  for  Pater,  with  his  richness  of  tempera- 
ment and  his  coloured  humanity.  Pater  was  a  poet 
who  fondly  dreamed  he  was  a  critic ;  Mr.  Symons  is  a 
critic  who  fondly  dreams  he  is  a  poet.  Mr.  Symons 
is  to  Pater  what  some  disciples  of  Leonardo  were  to 
that  great  conscious-unconscious  master.  Just  as 
such  disciples  of  Leonardo  learned  only  his  "sci- 
ence," took  to  heart  only  his  manifold  experiments  in 
anatomy  and  physics — missing,  as  they  could  not 
fail  to  miss,  the  incommunicable  secret  of  his  genius, 
to  the  subtle  master  himself  also  a  secret — so  Mr. 
Symons  has  detached  from  Pater  his  theory,  a 
theory  Pater  never  really  applied,  though  he  dreamed 

[310] 


A   VIMSECTIONIST   OF   LITERATURE 


all  his  life  he  was  applying  it,  and  fulfilled,  as  his 
master's  richer  nature  precluded  his  fulfilling,  his 
master's  dream  of  a  detached,  inhuman,  objective 
criticism — a  cold-blooded  chemical  analysis  of 
literature. 

Pater's  chemist  as  critic  was  merely  one  of  those 
one-sided  similitudes  which  the  creative  mind,  stri- 
ving for  the  moment  to  be  critical,  throws  out  with 
fanciful  carelessness.  Of  all  men.  Pater  knew  the 
dry  inadequacy  of  such  a  simiHtudc  to  the  complete 
and  mysterious  business  of  understanding  and  inter- 
preting organisms  so  fragrant  with  the  breath  of 
life,  so  beating  with  the  human  heart,  so  magically 
irradiated  with  the  enchantment  of  the  invisible 
powers,  as  are  the  masterpieces  of  any  of  the  arts, 
not  least  the  art  we  call  Htcrature.  Pater,  with  his 
gentle  humanity,  even  tender  humour — under  all 
the  sacerdotalism  of  his  style — thought  of  aesthetic 
criticism  as  a  sort  of  aesthetic  chemistry.  His 
disciple,  however,  has  gone  farther.  He  is,  among 
his  many  accomplishments,  a  chemist,  of  course; 
but,  seeking  for  one  word  to  describe  the  gift  most 
apparent  in  this  strange  book,  I  would  call  Mr. 
Symons  a  vivisectionist.  A  remarkable  vivisection- 
ist  of  literature. 

With  what  cold  hands  he  takes  up  alike  the  living 
and  the  dead,  the  living  and  the  dead  poets  born 
in  England  between  the  years  1722  and    1799,  and 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

marking  faintly  or  forcibly  "The  Romantic  Move- 
ment in  English  Poetry  " ;  with  what  cold  eyes  he 
reads  their  pages,  and  yet — ^to  such  success  has  the 
so-called  scientific  critical  method  evolved  with  Mr. 
Symons — with  what  unexpected  justice  of  judgment 
does  he  weigh  gifts  and  qualities  alien  to  the  bias  of 
his  mind  or  his  own  personal  predilection;  this  man 
who  never  seems  to  have  had  a  dream  of  his  own — 
this  man  who  never  seems  to  have  felt  a  kindly 
human  emotion — how  strange  it  is  that  he  can 
with  such  even  meticulous  accuracy  assess  the  dreams 
and  the  hearts  of  others.  In  that  same  essay  ©n 
Coleridge  Mr.  Symons  says  of  Lamb,  that,  "con- 
cerned only  with  individual  things,"  he  "looks 
straight  at  them,  not  through  them,  seeing  them 
implacably." 

Again,  quoting  with  patronising  approval  one  of 
Rossetti's  "invaluable  notes  on  poetry,"  he  reminds 
us  that,  for  Rossetti,  "  the  leading  point  about 
Coleridge's  work  is  its  human  love." 

I  place  these  two  quotations  together  for  the 
reason  that  Lamb's  "seeing  them  implacably" — 
the  "seeing"  having  reference  to  his  "midnight 
folios"  Elizabethans — included  loving  them.  Lamb 
loved  literature,  loved  it,  loved  his  unfashionable 
Elizabethans,  his  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  his  "  Anatomy 
of  Melancholy,"  his  Duchess  of  Newcastle,  and, 
through  his  great  love  of  them,  has  imposed  his  love 
[312] 


A   VIVISECTIONIST   OF   LITERATURI' 

upon  us  who  have  followed  him — very  much  as 
Pater  has  imposed  his  love  of  the  "Mona  Lisa" 
on  a  bewildered  American  public. 

Love!  Rossetti,  according  to  Mr.  Symons's  quo- 
tation, said  that  *'  the  leading  point  about  Cole- 
ridge's work  is  its  human  love." 

Commenting  on  this  passage,  and  some  words  of 
Coleridge's  own,  Mr.  Symons  says: 

Yet  Love,  though  it  is  the  word  which  he  uses 
of  himself,  is  not  really  what  he  himself  meant 
when  using  it,  but  rather  an  affectionate  sympathy, 
in  which  there  seems  to  have  been  but  little  clement 
of  passion. 

Rossetti,  let  us  again  recall,  said  "human  love." 
Mr.  Symons  evidently  understands  love  only  when 
it  contains  the  "element  of  passion."  "Love"  for 
Mr.  Symons  would  seem  to  mean  only  sexual  love, 
as  one  discovers  in  his  essay  on  Keats,  the  one  self- 
revelation  in  an  almost  inhumanly  impersonal  book. 

The  really  great  critic,  such  as  Lamb,  such  as  Cole- 
ridge, loves  literature.  His  judicial  "implacability," 
q,s  I  said  before,  includes  a  great  love,  a  great  grati- 
tude that  literature  exists  at  all — that  there  are 
great,  and  even  little,  books  in  the  world  to  read  and 
to  love.  He  does  not  sit  up  as  a  pert,  lightweight 
Rhadamanthus,  with  a  shrill  cockney  accent,  i)ro- 
nouncing  a  glib  doom  on  this  poet  and  on  that. 

[3^3] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

So  clever,  so  soulless,  so  without  pity,  so  without 
love,  and  yet  so  strangely  understanding,  are  these 
criticisms  of  Mr.  Symons,  that  I  am  driven  to  a  theo- 
logical explanation  of  them.  They  are  of  the 
Devil.  Seriously,  there  are  only  two  who  know 
the  world:  God  and  the  Devil.  Both  know  it 
almost  equally  well;  the  only  advantage  that  God 
has  in  his  knowledge  of  the  world  is  that  he  knows 
it — with  love. 

That  is  what  Coleridge  meant  in  the  "Ancient 
Mariner,"  what  Blake  meant,  and  what  Mr.  Symons 
— let  us  admit — has  been  doing  his  best  to  under- 
stand. 

Since  Mr.  Symons  met  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats — some 
of  us  remember  the  occasion — he  has  been  trying 
to  "believe  in  fairies,"  and  there  are  many  pages 
in  this  book  of  his  which  make  one  think  that  per- 
haps, after  all,  Mr.  Yeats  took  him  to  some  green 
hill  in  Connemara,  at  the  rising  of  the  moon,  and 
that  there,  indeed,  he  saw  that  world  which  to  the 
Celtic  eyes  of  Mr.  Yeats  is  the  only  visible  world — 
and  surely  the  only  world  worth  seeing. 

His  comment  on  "Kubla  Khan" — wonderfully 
written — will  illustrate,  at  the  same  time,  how 
nearly  Mr.  Symons  has  approached  that  world  of 
"fairie"  and  what  gossamer-sensitive  scales  are  his 
in  which  to  weigh  rainbows  and  moonbeams,  and 
even  human  tears. 

[314] 


A   VIVISECTIONIST   OF   LITERATURE 

Here  allow  me  to  go  back  for  a  moment  to  Mr. 
Symons's  essay  on  Keats  to  make  this  quotation, 
which  shows,  not  only  that  a  vivisectionist  critic 
may  be  human,  after  all,  but  that  Mr.  Symons  can, 
now  and  again,  like  his  great  master,  lapse  into 
passages  of  something  like  created  prose: 

Have  you  ever  thought  of  the  frightful  thing  it 
is  to  shift  one's  centre?  That  is,  what  it  is  to  love 
a  woman.  One's  nature  no  longer  radiates  freely 
from  its  own  centre.  The  centre  itself  is  shifted, 
is  put  outside  one's  self.  Up  to  then  one  may  have 
been  unhappy,  one  may  have  failed,  many  things 
may  seem  to  have  gone  wrong.  But  at  least  there 
was  this  security — that  one's  enemies  were  all  outside 
the  gate.  With  the  woman  whom  one  loves  one 
admits  all  one's  enemies.  Think:  All  one's  happi- 
ness to  depend  upon  the  will  of  another,  on  that 
other's  fragihty,  faith,  mutability;  on  the  way  life 
comes  to  the  heart,  soul,  conscience,  nerves  of  some- 
one else,  no  longer  the  quite  sufficient  difficulties 
of  a  personal  heart,  soul,  conscience,  and  nerves. 
It  is  to  call  in  a  passing  stranger  and  to  say:  "  Guard 
all  my  treasures  while  I  sleep.  For  there  is  no 
certainty  in  the  world,  beyond  the  certainty  that 
I  am  I,  and  that  what  is  not  I  can  never  draw  one 
breath  for  me,  though  I  were  dying  for  lack  of  it." 

But,  penetrating  and  subtle  as  are  Mr.  Symons's 

criticisms  of  the  great  poets  of  the  period  under 

his   consideration— Blake,  Wordsworth,     Coleridge, 

Shelley,  Keats,  Byron— the  more  piquant  originality 

[315] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 


of  his  book  for  me  lies  in  his  comments  on  the  lesser 
writers.  In  these  he  displays  at  times  a  cruel 
scientific  wit,  in  the  mere  exercise  of  his  critical 
function,  and  at  times  also  reveals  unexpected 
condescensions  of  kindly  human  feeling,  and  an 
understanding  of  certain  homely  human  needs  in 
regard  to  poetry  which  are  sometimes  satisfied  by 
poets  who  are  not  learned  metricists,  or  sophisticated 
literary  persons,  such  as  Mr.  Symons. 

It  is  delightful  to  watch  how  certain  once  sound- 
ing fames  shrivel  up  to  a  few  caustic  lines  at  the 
touch  of  his  pen — that  once  so  formidable  William 
Gifford,  for  example.  I  will  quote  Mr.  Symons' s 
comment  on  Gifford  entire  as  a  good  sample  of  his 
method: 

In  the  honest  fragment  of  autobiography  which 
prefaces  his  translation  of  Juvenal,  Gifford  tells 
us,  perhaps  needlessly,  that  he  had  no  natural  instinct 
for  poetry.  He  comments  on  his  "gloom  and  savage 
unsociabihty,"  and  on  his  waste  of  exertion  on 
"  splenetic  and  vexatious  tricks  " ;  and  "  The  Baviad  " 
and  "The  Moeviad"  are  hardly  more  than  so  much 
waste,  the  waste  of  a  prose  writer  who  takes  up 
verse  to  chastise  the  writers  of  bad  verse.  Only 
from  the  actual  evidence  of  the  footnotes  can  we 
believe  in  the  existence  of  "Laura's  tinkhng  trash" 
and  the  varied  and  unending  inaptitudes  of  Delia 
Crusca.  The  school  existed,  and  Gifford  killed  it;  yet 
such  small  game  leaves  but  mangled  carrion  behind; 
and  verse  and  notes  are  now  equally  unreadable. 

I316] 


A  VIVISECTIONIST   OF  LITERATURE 

And  how  sincerely  grateful  one  is  to  him  for  his 
castigation  of  Soiithey.  Poor  Southey!  Little  did 
he  foresee,  he  who  was  so  confident  in  the  judg- 
ment of  "posterity,"  that  a  twentieth-century  critic 
would  adjudge  his  wife  the  greater  poet!  Yet 
Mr,  Symons,  with  the  accuracy  of  some  diabolical 
psychometric  register,  measures  out  the  vital 
residuum  from  all  the  dross  and  dust  of  that  once 
so  pompous  fame.  In  this  cold,  unfailing  jus- 
tice is  the  singularity,  and  even  charm,  of  this  book. 
One  turns  to  one  poet  after  another,  just  to  see 
what  Mr.  Symons  has  made  of  them,  and  always  we 
meet  the  same  cold,  comprehending  mind,  incorrupt- 
ible as  a  spirit-level. 

You  would  expect  Mr.  Symons  to  appreciate 
Coleridge  and  Keats,  but  you  would  hardly  expect 
to  find  him,  not  only  appreciating,  but  writing 
his  very  best  about  Barham  (of  The  Ingoldsby 
Legends)  and  Tom  Hood.  It  is  in  these  surprises 
of  his  book  that  he  stretches  the  octave  of  his 
critical  gift,  and  shows  that  he  is  a  critic  indeed. 
Anyone,  if,  as  Charles  Lamb  said,  he  has  "  a  mind 
to,"  can  write  well  about  Coleridge  and  Keats,  but 
no  one  has  ever  written  like  this  about  Hood: 

"Eugene  Aram"  is  a  masterpiece  of  horror,  and 
in  it  Hood  perfects  that  style  which  has  an  emphasis 
far  beyond  epigram,  because  it  comes  straight  from 
the  heart,  and  carries  with  it  an  awful  inwardness  of 

[317] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

thought.  .  .  .  Since  "The  Ancient  Mariner"  there 
has  been  no  such  spiritual  fear  in  our  poetry,  and 
the  nightmare  comes  to  us  as  if  out  of  our  own  bed, 
the  sensations  translate  themselves  into  our  own 
nerves.  The  words  reach  us  like  a  whisper  from 
which  it  is  impossible  to  escape.  That  imagination, 
which  had  hardly  shown  itself  among  the  thick 
flocks  of  fancy  in  all  the  other  poems,  is  here,  naked, 
deadly,  and  beautiful.  In  "The  Song  of  the  Shirt" 
this  drama  passes  into  an  indignant  song,  not  less 
human,  and  coming  with  its  splendid  lyric  quahty 
to  prove  that  a  conviction,  a  moral  lesson  if  you  will, 
can  turn  red-hot  and  be  forged  into  a  poem.  Here, 
too,  is  "modernity,"  but  of  a  kind  that  can  be 
contemporary  with  every  age.  Only  one  more 
human  thing  exists  in  the  work  of  Hood,  and  that 
is  one  of  the  greatest  English  poems  of  its  kind, 
"The  Bridge  of  Sighs."  .  .  .  The  fragihty  of 
the  metre,  its  swiftness,  as  of  running  water,  the 
piercing  daintiness  of  the  words,  which  state  and 
denounce  in  a  song,  go  to  make  a  poem  which 
is  like  music  and  like  a  cry,  and  means  something 
terribly  close  and  accusing.  A  stone  is  flung  angrily 
and  straight  into  the  air,  and  may  strike  the  canopy 
before  it  falls  back  on  the  earth.     That  saying  of 

"Anywhere,  anywhere, 
Out  of  the  world!" 

has  passed  through  interpreters,  and  helped  to  make 
a  rare  corner  of  modern  literature,  and  the  pity 
of  the  whole  thing  is  like  that  of  a  grea^^  line  of  Dante, 
not  less  universal. 

[318] 


A  VIVISECTIONIST   OF  LITERATURE 

Coleridge  and  Keats  do  not  need  even  Mr.  Symons 
to  write  about  them,  but  in  such  writing  as  this  on 
Hood  a  critic  does  real  service,  not  only  to  the  shade 
of  a  neglected  man  of  genius,  but  to  all  lovers  of 
poetry. 

Again  and  again  in  this  book  we  come  with  a 
shock  of  grateful  surprise  upon  a  penetrating 
recognition  of  the  merits  of  some  half-forgotten 
writer — John  O'Keeffe,  Hookham  Frere,  Wil- 
liam Thom,  for  examples  among  many  others; 
and  if  a  poet,  however  obscure,  has  a  gift  how- 
ever small,  or  even  but  one  fine  line,  you  may 
be  sure  that  Mr.  Symons  will  have  discovered  it. 
For  his  business,  as  he  tells  us  in  his  preface,  is 
entirely  with  the  poet  and  his  poetry,  not  with  his 
environment  or  his  historical  significance.  He  uses 
the  phrase  "The  Romantic  Movement  in  English 
poetry"  to  cover  these  poets  who  illustrated,  in 
however  slight  a  degree,  the  awakening  of  English 
poetry  from  the  long  sleep  of  the  eighteenth  century 
— "The  Renascence  of  Wonder,"  to  quote  the  phrase 
of  Mr.  Watts- Dunton,  to  whom  Mr.  Symons  dedi- 
cates his  book  characteristically — in  Romany.  But 
it  will  be  best  to  allow  ]Mr.  Symons  to  explain  his 
attempt  and  method  for  himself: 

It  is  [he  says]  each  one  of  these  poets  whom  I 
want  to  study,  finding  out,  if  I  can,  what  he  was  in 
himself,   what    he  made  of  himself  in  his  work, 

I  319] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

and  by  what  means,  impulses,  and  instincts.  The 
poet,  the  poem — it  is  with  these  only  that  I  am 
concerned. 

And,  again  for  convenience,  I  have  set  limits 
to  my  plan.  The  year  1800  is  taken  as  a  sort  of 
centre,  or  shall  I  say  a  barrier  ?  which  shuts  out  every 
writer  of  verse  who  was  born  after  that  year,  and 
lets  through  everyone  who  survived  from  the  eigh- 
teenth into  the  nineteenth  century.  My  plan  allows 
me  no  choice  between  good  or  bad  writers  in  verse; 
I  give  each  his  due  consideration,  his  due  space  of  a 
few  lines  or  of  many  pages.  And  I  have  given 
each  in  chronological  order,  with  the  dates  of  his 
birth  and  death  and  of  the  first  edition  of  his  pub- 
lished volumes  of  verse.  I  have  consulted  no  his- 
tories of  literature,  nor  essays  about  it,  except  for 
the  bare  facts  of  a  man's  life  or  work,  but  I  have 
tried  to  get  at  one  thing  only — the  poet  in  his  poetry, 
his  poetry  in  the  poet;  it  is  the  same  thing. 

Mr.  Symons,  in  applying  this  method,  has  pro- 
duced a  book  of  criticism  of  real  value  and  of  great 
entertairmient.  There  is  no  book  quite  like  it 
in  English  criticism,  though  there  may  be  other 
books  of  criticism  of  more  lasting  importance — 
from  their  possession  of  that  humanising  enthusiasm 
which  seems  to  be  the  only  gift  Mr.  Symons  lacks. 
An  almost  painful  culture  is  his,  an  even  morbid 
cultivation  of  the  aesthetic  senses,  and  there  is  no 
need  to  say  how  arduously  he  has  trained  himself 
for  his  office  of  critic  by  eager  and  minute  studies 
[320] 


A  VIVISECTIONIST   OF  LITERATURE 

in  all  the  arts.  If  only,  as  I  said  at  the  beginning, 
we  could  feel  that  he  loved  literature  with  a  simpler 
joy  in  it,  that  he  occasionally  looked  up  to  his  poets 
with  something  of  a  natural  deUght  and  gratitude, 
rather  than  always  looked  down  upon  them  as 
"specimens"  to  be  classified  and  somewhat  pat-on- 
isingly  studied!  If  it  were  not  for  this  taint  of 
the  superior  person,  marring  all  he  writes,  Mr. 
S}Tiions  might  have  been  a  great  critic. 


321] 


VIII 

ANATOLE  FRANCE  IN  ENGLISH 
DRESS 

YEARS  ago  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  whose  own 
genius  is  much  akin  to  that  of  M.  Anatole 
France,  writing  of  M.  France,  with  a 
charming  stroke  of  fancy  worthy  of  his  subject, 
said  that  there  are  some  hterary  reputations  that, 
like  fairies,  cannot  cross  running  water — dehcate 
GaUic  fames,  he  meant,  of  course,  that  cannot  cross 
the  EngHsh  Channel.  At  that  time,  if  I  remember 
rightly,  M.  Anatole  France  had  written  httle  beyond 
The  Crhne  of  Sylvestrj  Bonnard,  his  famous 
story  of  Pontius  Pilate,  and  the  causeries  on  books 
and  the  stage  then  appearing  week  by  week  in  Le 
Temps  and  repubHshed  since  under  the  title  of 
La  Vie  Litteraire. 

Mr.  Lang,  however,  was  wrong,  for  M.  Anatole 
France's  reputation  has  since  then  crossed  much 
running  water,  including  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 
Indeed,  that  inspired  transplanter  of  hterary  exotics, 
Lafcadio  Hearn,  had  already  translated  The 
Crime  of  Sylvestre  Bonnard,  as  only  he  could 
[322] 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  IN  ENGLISH  DRESS 

translate;  and  Oscar  Wilde,  in  his  famous  essay 
on  criticism,  reprinted  in  his  Intentions,  had 
appropriated  and  developed  M.  France's  theory 
of  autobiographical  criticism,  as  only  Mr.  Wilde 
could  appropriate  and  develop. 

"Criticism,"  had  said  M,  France,  in  a  phrase 
which  became  immediately  classical,  "is  the  adven- 
tures of  the  critic's  soul  among  masterpieces." 
The  critic's  subject,  he  had  gone  on  to  say, 
was  merely  an  excuse  for  the  critic  talking  about 
himself.  "I  propose,"  he  said,  "to  speak  of  myself 
d,  pro  pros  Moliere,  Shakespeare,  Racine." 

M.  France  is,  therefore,  responsible  for  so  over- 
whelming a  deluge  of  autobiographical  criticism 
that  one  welcomes  such  a  return  to  the  old  impersonal 
method,  as  Mr.  Symons's  book  on  The  Roinantic 
Movement  in  English  Poetry,  of  which  I  have  writ- 
ten elsewhere. 

But  he  is  responsible,  too,  for  a  more  attractive, 
as  well  as  more  profound,  development  of  the  modern 
way  of  looking  at  the  past.  That  little  story  con- 
cerning Pontius  Pilate  and  Jesus  Christ,  to  which 
I  have  referred,  came  like  the  Hghtning  flash  of  a 
new  historical  method.  As  Pontius  answered  his 
learned  philosophical  friend,  concerning  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  trial  and  death  of  Jesus  Christ, 
so  some  day,  thirty  years  hence,  Lord  Kitchener, 
wheeled  in  a  bath-chair  somewhere  on  the  Riviera, 

[323] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

may  answer  some  learned  philosophical  friend, 
interested  in  the  comparative  study  of  religions, 
concerning  some  "Mad  Mullah"  who  made  "holy 
war"  during  Lord  Kitchener's  administration  of 
the  Soudan. 

So  fragile  seemed  this  gift  at  first,  so  like  a  flower! 
But,  as  George  Meredith  has  said:  "Some  flowers 
have  roots  deep  as  oaks  ";  and,  year  by  year,  as 
book  has  followed  book,  the  world  has  realised  that 
the  mind  of  Anatole  France  has  the  dynamic  quality 
of  those  terrible  unseen  forces,  which  seem  to  be 
more  powerful  as  they  are  invisible,  imponderable, 
and  immaterial;  such  forces  as  the  Anarchist  Clair, 
on  one  of  the  last  pages  of  M.  France's  profoundest 
and  wittiest  book.  Penguin  Island,  refers  to  in  this 
pregnant  and  prophetic  statement: 

Now  that  we  can  procure  radium  in  sufficient 
quantities,  science  possesses  incomparable  means  of 
analysis;  even  at  present  we  get  glimpses,  within 
what  are  called  simple  bodies,  of  extremely  diversified, 
complex  ones,  and  we  discover  energies  in  matter 
which  seem  to  increase  even  by  reason  of  its  tenuity. 

Indeed,  as  one  has  read  his  books  with  unusual 
gratitude  year  by  year,  we  have  seemed  to  catch 
a  glimpse  of  that  mysterious  intellectual  alchemy 
which  makes  gold  out  of  the  dreariest  ingredients, 
that  thaumaturgic  spiritual  power  which  made 
Aaron's  rod  to  blossom,  and  the  dry  bones  in  the 
[324] 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  IN  ENGLISH  DRESS 

valley  to  stand  up  and  clothe  themself  in  the  appeal- 
ing guise  of  humanity,  at  the  word  of  the  prophet 
Ezekiel. 

Probably  no  such  alchemist  of  learning,  no  such 
transmuter  of  dreary  historical  information,  has 
ever  written  in  any  language.  Place  some  withered 
old  chronicle  in  his  hands,  or  a  dissertation  on  Greek 
accents,  or  some  weary  history  of  a  forgotten  people, 
and  he  will  immediately  change  them  into  a  fairy 
tale. 

Of  all  writers  he  has  illustrated  the  truth  of  Mil- 
ton's lines: 

How  charming  is  divine  philosophy! 

Not  harsh,  and  crabbed,  as  dull  fools  suppose, 

But  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute. 

In  this  respect,  need  I  say,  he  is  almost  alone 
among  scholars;  for,  since  Erasmus,  whose  "Col- 
loquies" must  be  very  near  to  M.  France's  heart, 
no  man  has,  so  to  say,  got  so  much  fun  out  of  his 
learning  or  made  the  desert  of  encyclopedias  to 
blossom  like  the  rose. 

Strange,  beautiful,  fairylike,  cynical,  and  almost 
spiritual  writing!  Almost  spiritual!  That  "almost " 
expresses,  I  think,  for  some  of  us  our  disappoint- 
ment in  M.  France's  work.  No  one  has  written 
more  delicately  about  fairies,  or  rivers  flowing  amid 
flowering  reeds.     It  is  only  when,  as  in  his  Jeanne 

(325  J 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 


d'Arc,  he  presumes  to  talk  about  God,  that  we 
realise  that  he  is  a  Frenchman,  in  direct  descent 
from  Montaigne  and  Voltaire.  Few  Frenchmen  of 
importance  have  ever  believed  in  God;  the  French- 
man is  a  born  atheist,  and  an  Anglo-Saxon  can 
hardly  suffer  him  to  write  of  spiritual  things.  In 
illustration  of  this  statement,  let  me  quote  this 
passage  from  M.  France's  Jeanne  d'Arc,  just  ad- 
mirably translated  by  Miss  Winifred  Stephens: 

The  inhabitants  of  Orleans  feared  God.  In 
those  days  God  was  greatly  to  be  feared;  He  was 
almost  as  terrible  as  in  the  days  of  the  Philistines. 
The  poor  fisherfolk  were  afraid  of  being  repulsed 
if  they  addressed  Him  in  their  affliction :  they  thought 
it  better  to  take  a  roundabout  road  and  to  seek 
the  intercession  of  our  Lady  and  the  saints.  God 
respected  His  Mother  and  sought  to  please  Her  on 
every  occasion.  Likewise  He  deferred  to  the  wishes 
of  the  Blessed,  seated  on  His  right  hand  and  on 
His  left  in  Paradise,  and  He  inclined  His  ear  to  listen 
to  the  petitions  they  presented  to  Him.  Thus  in 
cases  of  dire  necessity  it  was  customary  to  solicit 
the  favour  of  the  saints  in  presenting  prayers  and 
offerings. 

Such  writing  as  this  will  seem  Httle  short  of  vulgar 
to  anyone  who  has  realised  in  any  degree  the  reality 
and  purity  of  the  invisible  presences;  and  it  is  this 
daintily  sneering  undertone  that  runs  through  his 
whole  book  that  makes  M.  France's  interpretation 
[326] 


ANATOLE   FRANCE   IN   ENGLISH   DRESS 

of  the  life  of  Jeanne  d'Arc,  with  all  its  transfigured 
learning,  with  all  its  illuminated  borders  and  histori- 
cal backgrounds,  a  vain  thing.  We  must  go  back  to 
Mr.  Lang,  after  all,  "  hagiographer,"  as  M.  France 
may  laughingly  call  him,  for  the  real  understanding — 
understanding  which  comes  of  reverence  before  the 
simplicity  of  divine  things — of  the  miraculous  girl 
who  saved  France,  and  to  whom,  as  M.  France 
wittily  says  in  the  preface  to  this  English  translation, 
England,  through  his  "English  critics,"  consecrates 
"a  pious  zeal  which  is  almost  an  expiatory  worship." 
But  if  M.  France  should  not  be  allowed  to  write 
about  God,  who  else  can  write  like  this  about  fairies 
and  the  old  pagan  revenanls  that  flickered  with 
fantastic  phosphorescence  on  the  Christian  borders 
of  the  mediaeval  world? 

At  the  foot  of  the  hill,  toward  the  village,  was 
a  spring,  on  the  margin  of  which  gooseberry  bushes 
intertv/ined  their  branches  of  greyish  green.  It 
was  called  the  Gooseberry  Spring  or  the  Blackthorn 
Spring.  If,  as  was  thought  by  a  graduate  of  the 
University  of  Paris,  Jeanne  described  it  as  La 
Fontaine-aux-Bonnes-F^es-Notre-Seigneur,  it  must 
have  been  because  the  village  people  called  it  by 
that  name.  By  making  use  of  that  term  it  would 
seem  as  if  those  rustic  souls  were  trying  to  Christian- 
ize the  nymphs  of  the  woods  and  waters,  in  whom 
certain  teachers  discerned  the  demons  which  the 
heathen  once  worshipped   as  goddesses. 

I  327] 


SOME  RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

It  was  quite  true.  Goddesses  as  much  feared  and 
venerated  as  the  Parcse  had  come  to  be  called  Fates, 
and  to  them  had  been  attributed  power  over  the 
destinies  of  men.  But,  fallen  long  since  from  their 
powerful  and  high  estate,  these  village  fairies  had 
grown  as  simple  as  the  people  among  whom  they 
lived.  They  were  invited  to  baptisms,  and  a  place 
at  table  was  laid  for  them  in  the  room  next  the 
mother's.  At  these  festivals  they  ate  alone  and 
came  and  went  without  anyone's  knowing;  people 
avoided  spying  upon  their  movements  for  fear  of 
displeasing  them.  It  is  the  custom  of  divine  per- 
sonages to  go  and  come  in  secret.  .  .  .  Near  by, 
on  the  border  of  the  wood,  was  an  ancient  beech, 
overhanging  the  high-road  to  Neufchateau  and  cast- 
ing a  grateful  shade.  The  beech  was  venerated 
almost  as  piously  as  had  been  those  trees  which 
were  held  sacred  in  the  days  before  apostoHc  mission- 
aries evangelized  Gaul.  No  hand  dared  touch  its 
branches,  which  swept  the  ground.  "Even  the 
lihes  are  not  more  beautiful."  Like  the  spring,  the 
tree  had  many  names.  It  was  called  I'Arbre-des- 
Dames,  I'Arbre-aux-Loges-les- Dames,  I'Arbre-des- 
Fees,  I'Arbre-Charmine-Fee-le-Bourlemont,  le  Beau 
Mai.  Everyone  at  Domremy  knew  that  fairies  ex- 
isted and  that  they  had  been  seen  under  I'Arbre- 
aux-Loges-les-Dames. 

Who,  again,  has  written  like  this  of  rivers: 

From  Neufchateau  to  Vaucouleurs  the  clear 
waters  of  the  Meuse  flow  freely  between  banks 
covered  with  rows  of  poplar  trees  and  low  bushes 

[328] 


ANATOLE  FRANCE  IN  ENGLISH  DRESS 

of  alder  and  willow.  Now  they  wind  in  sudden 
bends,  now  in  gradual  curves,  for  .ever  breaking  up 
into  narrow  streams,  and  then  the  threads  of  green- 
ish waters  gather  together  again,  or  here  and  there 
are  suddenly  lost  to  sight  under  ground.  In  the 
summer  the  river  is  a  lazy  stream,  barely  bending 
in  its  course  the  reeds  which  grow  upon  its  shallow 
bed,  and  from  the  bank  one  may  watch  its  lapping 
waters  kept  back  by  clumps  of  rushes  scarcely  cover- 
ing a  little  sand  and  moss.  But  in  the  season  of 
heavy  rains,  swollen  by  sudden  torrents,  deeper 
and  more  rapid,  as  it  rushes  along,  it  leaves  behind 
it  on  the  banks  a  kind  of  dew,  which  rises  in  pools 
of  clear  water  on  a  level  with  the  grass  of  the  valley. 
This  valley,  two  or  three  miles  broad,  stretches  un- 
broken between  low  hills,  softly  undulating,  crowned 
with  oaks,  maples,  and  birches.  Although  strewn 
with  wild  flowers  in  the  spring,  it  looks  severe,  grave, 
and  sometimes  even  sad.  The  green  grass  imparts 
to  it  a  monotony  like  that  of  stagnant  water;  even 
on  fine  days  one  is  conscious  of  a  hard,  cold  climate. 
The  sky  seems  more  genial  than  the  earth.  It 
beams  upon  it  with  a  tearful  smile;  it  constitutes 
all  the  movement,  the  grace,  the  exquisite  charm, 
of  this  delicate,  tranquil  landscape.  Then  when 
winter  comes  the  sky  merges  with  the  earth  in  a 
kind  of  chaos.  Fogs  come  down,  thick  and  clinging. 
The  white,  light  mists  which  in  summer  veil  the 
bottom  of  the  valley,  give  place  to  thick  clouds  and 
dark,  moving  mountains,  but  slowly  scattered  by 
a  red,  cold  sun.  Wanderers  ranging  the  uplands 
in  the  early  morning  might  dream  with  the  mystics 
in  their  ecstasy  that  they  are  walking  on  clouds. 

[329] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

And  it  is  impossible  to  read  these  quotations 
without  a  grateful  surprise  that  such  delicate  French 
can  be  translated  into  such  delicate,  idiomatic 
English.  Mr.  Frederic  Chapman,  the  editor  of  this 
English  edition  of  M.  France,  himself  the  translator 
of  several  of  the  volumes,  has  been  fortunate  in  his 
choice  of  associates,  for  a  talent  so  elusive,  a  fancy 
so  elfish,  a  style  so  mobile,  language  so  strangely 
dyed  with  so  many  half-forgotten  colours,  a  mind 
so  clear  and  yet  so  whimsical,  to  have  found  such 
reincarnation  in  another  language  is  a  piece  of  good 
fortune  that  has  seldom  befallen  a  writer  of  any 
tongue. 


1 330] 


IX 

WILLIAM  WATSON    AND    HIS 
POETRY 

A  VOLUME  of  "New  Poems"  by  Mr.  Wat- 
son— really  new  poems — is,  as  his  English 
publisher  has  truthfully  advertised,  an 
event  of  real  interest,  perhaps  even  importance,  to 
that  small  band  of  us  who  love,  though  we  may  not 
cultivate,  "the  homely  slighted  shepherd's  trade." 
In  the  interval  between  his  last  volume  of  new 
verses  and  this  now  published  Mr.  Watson  has 
vouchsafed  no  condescension  to  his  admirers  beyond 
the  issuing  of  various  new  and  collected  editions  of 
the  poems  some  of  us  seem  to  have  grown  old  in 
quoting — a  frail,  but  perhaps  imperishable,  garland 
of  elegiac  and  epigrammatic  song.  From  the  begin- 
ning Mr.  Watson  has  treated  himself  as  a  classic, 
with  a  Wordsworthian  complacency  in  his  own 
immortality,  and  he  has  edited  and  re-edited  himself 
in  succeeding  editions  of  his  poems,  with  a  reverence 
and  a  scholarly  rectitude  such  as  in  our  day  has  only 
been  paralleled  by  Prof.  Robinson  Ellis's  editing  of 
Catullus. 

[331] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

In  tliis  Mr.  Watson  has,  we  feel,  been  less  of  an 
egoist  than  a  faithful  servant  of  the  Muses.  He 
has  also  held  in  singular  regard  the  duty  owed  by 
a  poet  to  those  who  receive  his  words.  Except  in 
one  instance,  he  has  never  treated  his  high  gift 
sacrilegiously,  and  has  never  yielded  to  any  of  the 
many  temptations  of  so  real  and  eloquent  a  power 
of  words. 

Mr.  Watson,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  is  not 
one  of  those  full-blooded  spontaneous  poets  who, 
like  Shakespeare,  Browning,  or  Swinburne,  give 
to  the  world  a  careless  harvest  of  themselves;  with 
the  indifference  of  conscious  fecundity,  and  generous 
abundance  of  fruit  and  blossom. 

It  is  more  natural,  and  even  obvious,  to  compare 
him  with  Gray;  though  in  justice  both  to  Gray  and 
Mr.  Watson  it  must  be  remembered  that,  whatever 
their  similarities  in  method  and  sacred  regard  for 
their  own  writings,  there  is  a  dissimilarity  in  sub- 
ject-matter which  compels  one  to  consider  Gray 
the  greater  poet.  For,  when  the  fames  of  two 
poets  are  in  the  balance,  each  having  something 
like  equal  gifts,  the  subject-matter  of  their  poems 
must  weigh  the  scale  down  one  way  or  the  other. 
If  one  poet  writes  of  life  broad  and  simple  and 
tragic — the  life  of  men  and  women  tending  the 
farm  and  tilling  the  soil,  bearing  and  rearing  children, 
sowing    and    reaping,    milking    in     lonely    winter 

[332] 


WILLIAM   WATSON   AND   HIS   POETRY 

morns,  and  generally  taking  up  the  daily  human 
struggle  with  a  mysterious  universe,  and  at  the 
last  going  to  rest  under  some  pathetic  village  head- 
stone, we  say  that  his  subject-matter  is  very  near 
to  the  great  warm  heart  of  man. 

If  another  poet,  writing  with  almost  equal  skill 
and  charm,  chooses  for  his  subject-matter  themes 
less  near  to  the  heart  of  man  than  near  to  the  heart 
of  the  Hterary  man,  we  call  him,  in  the  old  phrase,  "a 
poet's  poet,"  or  a  writer's  writer.  Such  a  poet  is 
Mr.  Watson.  His  best  poetry  has  been  inspired 
by  a  noble  enthusiasm  for  literature,  an  enthusiasm 
directed  by  an  exceptionally  sure  insight  and  skill 
of  critical  definition.  There  are  four  Hnes  in  his 
"Wordsworth's  Grave"  which,  sheerly  as  criticism, 
are  worth  whole  volumes  of  prose.  There  is  hardly 
need  to  quote  them,  for  they  are  so  well  known, 
as  perhaps  the  best  example  of  concentrated  criti- 
cism— criticism  that  is  itself  poetry — in  the  English 
language.  Yet  I  cannot  deny  myself  the  pleasure 
of  once  more  copying  them  out: 

Not  Milton's  keen  translunar  music  thine. 

Not  Shakespeare's  cloudless,  boundless,  human  view. 

Not  Shelley's  flush  of  rose  on  peaks  divine, 
Nor  yet  the  wizard  twilight  Coleridge  knew. 

As  an  elegiac  critic,  rather  than  simple  elegist, 
Mr.   Watson   has  a  j)lacc  all   his  own.     Not  only 

[333] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

his  "Wordsworth's  Grave,"  but  his  elegies  on 
Matthew  Arnold  and  Burns — both  better  than  his 
more  notorious  elegy  on  Tennyson,  "Lachrymae 
Musarum" — give  him,  I  think,  something  of  that 
fame  which  is  more  enduring  than  brass. 

If  men  in  distant  future  days  still  go  on  loving 
poetry,  and  the  poets  Mr.  Watson  has  sung,  they 
can  hardly  fail  to  read  with  gratitude  the  man  who 
has  sung  as  he  has  done  of  the  great  poets  of  his 
own  time — not,  of  course,  including  Swinburne. 

Sometimes,  too,  in  his  academic  garden  has  sprung 
a  laughing  blue-eyed  lyric,  such  as  his  song  of  April ; 
and  some  of  us,  as  boys  in  Liverpool,  and  even  then 
collectors  of  first  editions,  bought  up  all  the  copies 
we  could  of  his  famous  "Epigrams."  Since  then 
how  often  we  have  quoted  his  lines  on  Shelley  and 
Harriet  Westbrook : 

A  star  looked  down  from  heaven,  and  loved  a  flower, 
Grown  in  earth's  garden — loved  it  for  an  hour; 
O  you  who  watch  his  orbit  in  the  spheres, 
Refuse  not  to  a  ruined  rosebud  tears. 

Yes!  and  the  same  gifts  are  here  still  in  these 
somewhat  wintry  gleanings  gathered  into  a  thin 
sheaf  by  the  John  Lane  Company.  Here  is  still 
an  echo  of  the  same  noble  rage  which  stirred  Mr. 
Watson  to  write  his  well-known  sonnets  on  "the 
Armenian    atrocities" — as   we   called    them    coUo- 

[334] 


WILLIAM   WATSON   AND   HIS   POETRY 

quially,  as  though  they  were  a  form  of  Turkish 
delight.  His  sonnet  on  "Leopold  of  Belgium"  is  a 
fine  example  of  his  righteous  indignation : 

Khalifs  and  Khans  have  we  beheld,  who  trod 

The  people  as  one  neck  beneath  their  heel; 

Whose  revel  was  the  woe  they  could  not  feel, 
\\Tiose  pastime  was  the  dripping  scourge  and  rod; 
Who  shook  swift  death  on  thousands  with  a  nod, 

And  made  mankind  as  stubble  to  their  steel ; 

Who  slew  for  Faith  and  Heaven,  in  dreadful  zeal 
To  pleasure  Him  whom  they  mistook  for  God. 
No  zeal,  no  Faith  inspired  this  Leopold, 

Nor  any  madness  of  half-splendid  birth. 
Merely  he  loosed  the  hounds  that  rend  and  slay 
That  he  might  have  his  fill  of  loathsome  gold. 

Embalm  him,  Time!    Forget  him  not,  O  Earth! 
Trumpet  his  name,  and  flood  his  deeds  with  day. 

Also  his  poem  "Vivisection"  is  sternly  tender  with 
a  pity  that  has  always  filled  his  heart  for  oppressed 
things,  be  they  nations  or  animals.  The  beauty, 
too,  that  visits  his  lips  awhile  with  an  aery  spirituality 
is  here  in  these  opening  lines: 

Wild  nature,  not  by  kindness  won,  because 

So  seldom  wooed  that  way; — thou  melodist, 

That  singest  only  the  eternal  songs. 

And  changeless  through  the  ages,  conquerest  Time; 

Thou  white-wing'd  joy,  skimming  the  white-lipp'd  sea; 

Thou  antlered  forest  lord:  nor  ye  alone — 

The  eminent  and  splendid  ones  of  Earth — 

But  creatures  nearer  to  Man's  daily  walk  .  .  . 

[335] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

But  the  two  lines  that  folluw  illustrate  the  defect  of 
Mr.  Watson's  method: 

Thou  timorous  fugitive,  obscurely  housed 

In  populous  labyrinth  under  hillock  and  holm  .  .  , 

Mr.  Watson,  of  course,  means  a  rabbit;  as  when 
Milton  wrote  of  his  proverbial  "tame  villatic  fowl," 
he  meant,  presumably,  a  hen. 

Yet  one  cannot  but  feel  that  such  a  style  of 
referring  to  a  rabbit  is  a  little  too  pontifical,  and, 
humanly,  prefer  Oliver  Herford's  "timid  bunny 
in  the  land." 

It  is  in  such  lines  as  these  that  what  one  must 
call  the  anachronism  of  Mr.  Watson's  style  becomes 
trivially  apparent.  It  is  seriously  apparent  in  his 
treatment  of  modern  political  situations.  Practically, 
it  is  no  use  writing  against  the  modern  Turk  in  the 
manner  of  Milton  or  Wordsworth.  The  modern 
Trytaeus  must  strike  the  lyre  to  a  music  that  the 
modern  man  understands.  Mr.  Watson's  "Purple 
East" — alas! — did  nothing  for  Armenia;  but  Mr. 
Kipling's  "Absent-Minded  Beggar"  earned  many 
thousand  pounds  for  the  widows  of  English  soldiers 
during  the  Boer  war. 

It  may  be  said  that  Mr.   Watson's  sonnets  on 
Armenia  are  better  poetry  than   Mr.   Kipling's — 
though    I    am    not   saying   it;    my   point    is  that 
[336] 


WILLIAM   WATSON   AND   HIS   POETRY 

poetry  aiming  at  practical  results  should  be  prac- 
tical, and  able  to  do  the  work  the  poet  sets  out 
to  do. 

I  should  imagine  it  a  somewhat  hopeless  enter- 
prise to  attack  the  Oil  Trust  in  the  metre  of  Spenser's 
"Faerie  Queene,"  but  I  can  imagine  a  modern  poet 
attacking  it  to  some  purpose  in  the  language — well, 
say,  of  George  Ade. 

But  this  is  merely  to  point  out  the  obvious  defect 
of  ^Ir.  Watson's  method  as  appUed  with  sincere 
purpose  to  certain  modern  phenomena.  All  methods 
have  their  defects,  but  few  poetic  methods  have 
brought  to  living  ears  a  music  of  greater  dignity, 
or,  with  such  grave  sweetness,  recalled  the  wan- 
dering modern  mind  to  a  too  long  forgotten 
mood  of  beautiful  antique  meditation.  If  there 
was  nothing  else  in  ISIr.  Watson's  new  volume, 
it  would  surely  be  worth  buying  over  and  over 
again  for  this  one  of  many  beautiful  "Sonnets 
to  Miranda": 

If  I  had  never  known  your  face  at  all, 
Had  only  heard  you  speak,  beyond  thick  screen 
Of  leaves,  in  an  old  garden,  when  the  sheen 

Of  morning  dwelt  on  dial  and  ivied  wall, 

I  think  your  voice  had  been  enough  to  call 
Yourself  before  me,  in  living  vision  seen. 
So  pregnant  with  your  Essence  had  it  been, 

So  charged  with  You,  in  each  soft  rise  and  fall. 

22  [337] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

At  least  I  know,  that  when  upon  the  night 

With  chanted  word  your  voice  lets  loose  your  soul, 

I  am  pierced,  I  am  pierced  and  cloven,  with  Delight 
That  hath  all  Pain  within  it,  and  the  whole 

World's  tears;  all  ecstasy  of  inward  sight; 
And  the  blind  cry  of  all  the  seas  that  roll. 


[33^] 


X 

A    DAY   AT   HOME   WITH 
BJORNSON 

I  HAVE  read  in  the  papers  that  Bjornson  is 
dying.  I  hope  not  yet.  For  his  death  will 
make  the  world  still  smaller.  Nearly  all  the 
giants  are  gone.  When  Bjornson  dies  there  will  be 
only  one  giant  left — Tolstoi. 

Bjornson  is  more  than  a  writer — beautiful  writer 
and  singer  of  lovely  songs  as  he  is — we  all  know 
"  Arne,"  and  a  Norwegian  friend  of  mine  has  trans- 
lated for  me  his  poems. 

I,  too,  have  heard  him  speak.  He  is  one  of  the 
greatest  orators  in  the  world.  Whether  or  not  he  was 
wise  in  using  the  force  of  his  great  and  gentle  pcr- 
sonaHty  in  severing  Sweden  and  Norway,  and  giving 
them  separate  flags,  is  a  question  for  the  future  to 
decide. 

The  morning,  many  years  ago,  when  I  had  tiie 
honour  of  being  his  guest  in  his  house  in  Aulestad, 
near  Lillehammer — in  company  with  my  friends 
John  Lane,  Osman  Edwards,  and  Roscncrantz 
Johnson,  Johnson  being  one  of  the  famous  repre- 

[339] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

sentatives  of  the  Norwegian  "Boheme" — he  talked 
to  me  about  Norway  and  Sweden  as  he  paced  his 
room,  talked  wonderful  English,  as  most  Scandina- 
vians can.  I  knew  very  little  about  it.  I  was  only 
a  boy,  and  he  was  a  very  great  man.  Of  course, 
I  didn't  try  to  talk.  It  was  wonderful  enough  to 
listen. 

We  had  arrived  at  Aulestad  quite  early  in  the 
morning,  riding  in  carioles — about  7:30.  Herr 
Bjomson's  house  is  built  in  a  long  pine-clad  valley, 
a  verandaed  house,  American  fashion,  and  as  we 
arrived  in  our  funny  little  carioles,  Bjornson  was 
standing  awaiting  us  with  outspread  arms,  Hke  a 
patriarch,  with  his  beautiful  white  locks,  and  his 
broad,  strong,  glorious,  gentle  face,  and  he  cried  out 
to  us:  "Welcome  to  Aulestad!"  On  his  shoulder 
he  carried  a  towel.  "I  am  going  to  take  my  bath," 
he  said,  "  up  here  in  the  ravine.     Will  you  join  me  ?" 

So  we  walked  up  through  pine  trees  with  him, 
and  came  where  a  torrent  of  thirteen  feet  of  white 
water  fell  among  the  rocks. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  beauty  of  that  great  old 
man,  standing,  like  the  god  Saturn,  with  the  white 
water  pouring  over  his  shoulders,  among  the  rocks 
and  the  pines. 

Then  we  went  down  again  to  the  house  and  met 
his  beautiful  wife,  his  beautiful  daughter  Bergliot, 
and  his  strong  son,  the  Director  of  the  Royal  Theatre 
[340] 


A   DAY   AT  HOME   WITH   BJORNSON 

in  Christiania.  And  Herr  Bjornson  and  his  wife, 
after  the  old  saga  fashion,  sat  together  at  the  head 
of  the  table,  like  a  King  and  a  Queen,  on  a  raised 
dais,  and  all  drank  ''skale"  to  their  four  guests. 

Afterward  Bjornson  took  mc  up  to  his  study  and 
we  talked  about  Ibsen,  whose  son,  Sigurd,  Bcrgliot 
Bjornson  afterwards  married. 

"Ibsen,"  said  Bjornson  to  me,  "is  not  a  man — • 
he  is  only  a  pen." 

"A  wonderful  pen,  though,  don't  you  think?" 
I  answered. 

But  in  my  heart  I  said:  "It  is  far  more  wonderful 
to  be  a  like  man  you." 


341] 


XI 

SIDNEY   LANIER:     AN    ENGLISH 
APPRECIATION 


A 


FRIEND  asked  me  the  other  day  where  a 
certain  quotation  in  one  of  my  articles 
came  from.     This  was  the  quotation: 


As  the  marsh-hen  secretly  builds  on  the  watery  sod, 
Behold  I  will  build  me  a  nest  on  the  greatness  of  God: 
I  will  fly  in  the  greatness  of  God  as  the  marsh-hen  flies 
In  the  freedom  that  fills  all  the  space  'twixt  the  marsh 

and  the  skies: 
By  so  many  roots  as  the  marsh-grass  sends  in  the  sod 
I  will  heartily  lay  me  a-hold  on  the  greatness  of  God: 
Oh,  like  to  the  greatness  of  God  is  the  greatness  within 
The  range  of  the  marshes,  the  liberal  marshes  of  Glynn. 

It  made  me  proud  and  happy  thus  to  have  an 
opportunity  of  introducing  another  reader  to  the 
poetry  of  Sidney  Lanier.  Seven  years  ago  Messrs. 
Gay  &  Bird  published  an  edition  of  his  poems  in 
this  country,  yet  he  remains  virtually  unknown — ■ 
and  hundreds  of  poetry  lovers  are  the  poorer  for  it. 
I  had  been  fortunate  enough  to  know  him  two  or 
three  years  before,  through  an  article  by  Mr. 
Stedman  in  an  American  magazine.  Some  of  the 
[342] 


SIDNEY  LANIER 


extracts  then  made  had  never  forsaken  my  memory. 
With  the  publication  of  IMessrs.  Gay  &  Bird's 
edition  I  took  the  opportunity  of  knowing  the  whole 
poems;  and  two  of  my  friends,  not  inglorious  as 
poets  themselves,  will,  I  know,  recall  a  night  of 
poetical  debauch — I  mean  a  debauch  of  poetry! — 
in  which  I  passed  on  my  new-found  treasure  to 
them.  They  thought  him  no  less  wonderful  than 
I  did;  and  his  strenuous,  romantic,  pitiful  history 
moved  them  as  it  moved  me.  For  Lanier  fought 
a  battle  with  death  (technically,  consumption) 
to  which  Keats' s  classic  consumption  was  child's 
play.  It  is  so  easy  to  fight  anything,  even  con- 
sumption, if  you  have  nothing  else  to  do;  but  if  you 
have  a  home  to  keep  going  as  well,  and  only  a 
pen  to  keep  it  going  with — well,  you  look  upon 
John  Keats  as  one  of  the  sybarites  of  immor- 
tality. Fortunately,  Lanier  had  a  flute,  too,  and 
thereby  hangs  much  of  his  history,  as  well  as  the 
explanation  of  his  temperament  and  gift.  Lanier 
was  one  of  the  few  poets  who  have  loved  music 
as  wftW  as,  if  not  more  than,  poetry;  and  the  music 
in  him  had  an  interesting  ancestry:  it  came  all  the 
way  from  one  Jerome  Lanier,  a  Huguenot  refugee, 
a  musical  composer,  at  the  court  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 
and  it  was  successively  transmitted  by  Jerome's 
son  Nicholas — who  was  "in  high  favour"  as  a 
musician  with  both  James  I.  and  Charles  I. — and 

[343] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

Nicholas's  son  Nicholas,  apparently  no  less  favoured 
by  Charles  II.  "A  portrait  of  the  elder  Nicholas 
Lanier,  by  his  friend  Van  Dyck,"  I  read  in  Mr. 
W.  Hayes  Ward's  memorial  introduction  to  Lanier's 
poems,  "was  sold  with  other  pictures  belonging 
to  Charles  L  after  his  execution."  Thus,  Lanier's 
flute  originally  came  from  that  enchanted  period 
of  English  music  when  Campion  was  making  his 
Books  of  Airs.  There  can  be  few  more  romantic 
instances  of  the  transmission  of  taste  and  faculty 
than  this  reincarnation  of  Stuart  music  in  a  boy 
bom  at  Macon,  in  Georgia,  February  3,  1842.  As 
a  child  he  learned  to  play,  ''without  instruction," 
on  every  available  instrument — "  flute,  organ,  piano, 
violin,  guitar,  and  banjo,  especially  devoting  him- 
self to  the  flute  in  deference  to  his  father,  who 
feared  for  him  the  powerful  fascination  of  the  violin." 
In  fact,  his  relatives  generally  were  more  alarmed 
than  happy  about  his  music,  as  a  man's  relatives — 
very  naturally — are  at  the  appearance  in  him  of  a 
serious  passion  for  any  art.  Besides,  music  used  to 
induce  in  the  young  Lanier  states  of  trance  ecstasy 
which  left  him  shaken  and  exhausted.  That  ecstasy, 
so  feared  by  his  friends,  is,  we  shall  see,  the  very 
quality  of  highest  value  in  his  poetry.  But  that  all 
this  artistic  sensibility  meant  no  lack  of  manly 
fibre  the  war  between  North  and  South  was  soon 
to  prove.  At  the  age  of  nineteen  he  was  drafted — • 
[344] 


SIDNEY  LANIER 


not  forgetting  his  flute — into  the  Second  Georgia 
Battalion  of  the  Confederate  Army,  and  with  that 
army  he  was  to  remain,  seeing  much  active  service, 
and  no  little  distinguishing  himself  for  four  years. 
Among  other  things  he  was  a  blockade-runner. 
His  blockade-running  resulted  in  five  months' 
imprisonment  in  Point  Lookout,  from  which  he 
was  released  in  February,  1865,  to  do  a  long  tramp 
home  to  Georgia.  It  was  the  strain  of  this  that 
gave  his  apparently  hereditary  consumption  its 
opportunity;  and  henceforth,  till  his  death  at  the 
age  of  thirty-nine,  his  life  was  to  be  a  long  fight  with 
death — a  fight  carried  on  with  a  heroism  which, 
in  one  or  two  instances,  appears  almost  excessive,  and 
from  which,  one  cannot  help  feeling,  that  he  might 
have  been  spared  by  friends  who  helped  him  now  and 
then  so  much,  that  it  seems  as  though  they  should 
have  helped  him  more.  He  gained  his  livelihood 
during  this  time  partly  by  writing  and  lecturing, 
and  partly  by  his  flute.  He  was  "the  first  flute" 
in  the  Peabody  Concerts  at  Baltimore,  and  his 
dir.ector  has  written  of  him  as  something  like  a  great 
p/rformer.  Only  nine  months  before  his  death 
we  read  that  "when  too  feeble  to  raise  his  food  to 
his  mouth,  with  a  fever  temperature  of  104  degrees," 
he  pencilled  his  finest  poem,  called  "Sunrise." 
Such,  indeed,  is  what  Mr.  William  Watson  calls  "the 
imperative  breath  of  song." 

[345] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE  REVIEWS 

All  this,  then,  and  how  much  more,  lay  behind 
the  quotation  which  took  my  friend's  fancy.  That 
quotation  is  from  an  all-too-curtailed  series  of 
"  Hymns  of  the  Marshes,"  which  Lanier  had  intended 
to  make  one  big,  ambitious  poem.  There  are  four 
"  hymns"  in  all,  but  only  two  are  of  real  importance, 
namely,  "Sunrise"  and  the  "Marshes  of  Glynn." 
In  fact,  had  he  written  all  his  other  poems,  and 
missed  writing  these  (striking,  suggestive,  and  fine- 
lined  as  those  other  poems  often  are),  he  could 
hardly  have  been  said  to  succeed  in  his  high  poetic 
ambition — as  by  these  two  poems  I  think  he  must 
be  allowed  to  succeed.  In  the  other  poems  you  see 
many  of  the  qualities,  perhaps  all  the  qualities, 
which  strike  you  in  the  "Hymns" — the  impassioned 
observation  of  nature,  the  Donne-like  "metaphysi- 
cal" fancy,  the  religious  and  somewhat  mystic 
elevation  of  feeling,  expressed  often  in  terms  of  a 
deep  imaginative  understanding  of  modern  scientific 
conceptions;  in  fact,  you  find  all  save  the  important 
quality  of  that  ecstasy  which  in  the  "Hymns" 
fuses  all  into  one  splendid  flame  of  adoration  upon 
the  altar  of  the  visible  universe.  The  ecstasy  of 
modern  man  as  he  stands  and  beholds  the  sunrise 
or  the  coming  of  the  stars,  or  any  such  superb,  ele- 
mental glory,  has,  perhaps,  never  been  more  keenly 
translated  into  verse.  Those  who  heard  Lanier 
play  remarked  upon  "the  strange  violin  effects  which 
[346] 


SIDNEY  LANIER 


he  conquered  from  the  flute."  Is  it  fanciful  to  feel 
that  in  these  long,  sweeping,  and  hcart-breakingly 
sensitive  lines,  Lanier  equally  cheated  his  father, 
who,  we  have  seen,  "feared  for  him  the  fascination 
of  the  violin"  ?  I  shall  need  a  long  quotation,  and 
even  that  may,  properly,  be  inadequate  to  illustrate 
what  I  mean.  Lanier  is  often  exquisite  and  lovingly 
learned  in  detail;  but  his  verse  is  large  in  movement 
and  needs  room. 

The  tide's  at  full:   the  marsh  with  flooded  streams 

Glimmers,  a  limpid  labyrinth  of  dreams. 

Each  winding  creek  in  grave  entrancement  lies, 

A  rhapsody  of  morning-stars.     The  skies 

Shine  scant  with  one  forked  galaxy, — 

The  marsh  brags  ten:   looped  on  his  breast  they  lie. 

Oh,  what  if  a  sound  should  be  made  ! 

Oh,  what  if  a  bound  should  be  laid 

To  this  bow-and-string  tension  of  beauty  and  silence 

a-spring, — 
To  the  bend  of  beauty  the  bow,  or  the  hold  of  silence 

the  string  ! 
I  fear  me,  I  fear  me  yon  dome  of  diaphanous  gleam 
Will  break  as  a  bubble  o'erblown  in  a  dream, — 
Yon  dome  of  too-tenuous  tissues  of  space  and  of  night, 
Overweighted  with  stars,  overfreighted  with  light, 
Oversated  with  beauty  and  silence,  will  seem 
But  a  bubble  that  broke  in  a  dream. 
If  a  bound  of  degree  to  this  grace  be  laid. 
Or  a  sound  or  a  motion  made. 

[347] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE   REVIEWS 

But  no:  it  is  made:  list!  somewhere, — mystery,  where? 

In  the  leaves?    in  the  air? 

In  my  heart?    is  a  motion  made: 

'Tis  a  motion  of  dawn,  like  a  flicker  of  shade  on  shade. 

In  the  leaves  'tis  palpable:    low  multitudinous  stirring 

Upward    through    the    woods;     the    little    ones,    softly 

conferring. 
Have  settled  my  lord's  to  be  looked  for  so;  they  are  still; 
But  the  air  and  my  heart  and  the  earth  are  a-thrill, — 
And  look  where  the  wild  duck  sails  round  the  bend  of 

the  river, — 
And  look  where  a  passionate  shiver 
Expectant  is  bending  the  blades 
Of  the  marsh-grass  in  serial  shimmers  and  shades, — 
And  invisible  wings,  fast  fleeting,  fast  fleeting, 
Are  beating 
The   dark   overhead  as   my   heart   beats, — and   steady 

and  free 
Is  the  ebb-tide  flowing  from  marsh  to  sea — 
(Run  home,  little  streams, 
With  your  lapfuls  of  stars  and  dreams), — 
And  a  sailor  unseen  is  hoisting  a-peak. 

For  list,  down  the  inshore  curve  of  the  creek 

How  merrily  flutters  the  sail, — 

And  lo!   in  the  East!     Will  the  East  unveil? 

The  East  is  unveiled,  the  East  hath  confessed 

A  flush:  'tis  alive:    'tis  dead,  ere  the  West 

Was  aware  of  it:    nay,  'tis  abiding,  'tis  unwithdrawn: 

Have  a  care,  sweet  Heaven  !    'Tis  Dawn. 

I  think  this  bears  out  what  I  have  said — more 
than  I  have  said.     Anyone   who    pleases  may  find 
[348I 


SIDNEY   LANIER 


little  literary  faults.  Even  I  could  do  that.  But 
if  only  I  could  praise  it  as  it  deserves  !  Those  who 
should  imagine  that  Lanier  wrote  in  this  apparently 
"loose"  Atlantic-roller  metre  from  metrical  igno- 
rance are,  of  course,  very  much  mistaken.  On  the 
contrary,  he  was  a  very  learned  mctrist,  as  those 
who  have  grappled  with  his  book  on  The  Science 
of  English  Verse  will  know.  In  that  book  the 
inherited  music  in  him  came  out  once  more  as 
theory,  his  contention  being  that  metrical  law  must 
be  based  on  musical  law.  Personally,  I  have  no 
opinion  on  the  subject;  and,  however  valuable  in 
its  province  Lanier's  treatise  may  be,  I  can  only 
wish  he  had  spent  the  precious  six  weeks  it  took 
to  write  it  (only  six  weeks  for  over  three  hundred 
closely- written  pages — consumption,  too!)  in  writing 
another  of  his  "Hymns  of  the  Marshes." 

I  wonder  whom  these  learned  treatises  on  metre 
benefit.  Not  the  poets,  I  am  thinking.  I  imagine 
that  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  would  have  written  as 
good  blank  verse,  though  Mr.  Robert  Bridges's 
treatise  on  Miltonic  blank  verse  had  never  seen  that 
dim  light  of  publicity  vouchsafed  to  technical  master- 
pieces. It  is  to  be  feared  that  poetry  comes  by 
nature — and  there  is*  no  poetry  without  a  musical 
ear — and  that  all  the  metrical  training  a  poet  needs 
is  birched  into  him  at  school.  Indeed,  1  think  most 
poets  take  lessons  in  metre  after  they  are  famous j 

I  349  ] 


SOME   RETROSPECTIVE     REVIEWS 

for  fear  of  awkward  questions.  The  only  train- 
ing in  metre  a  poet  needs  is  the  reading  of  great 
poets;  not  anatomically,  but  just — naturally.  The 
study  of  metre  is  the  study  of  skeletons.  The  study 
of  skeletons  never  yet  helped  a  man  to  dance. 


350] 


Date  Due 


■•^.i„L[BRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  600  647    ; 


